6. Maya #2
He guides me toward the exit, his hand never leaving my elbow, his smile never wavering. We pass through the ballroom like a ship moving through ice, people parting before us, conversation resuming in our wake.
I twist to look back at Amelia. She’s being comforted by the silver-haired matron and several other women, dabbing at her tears with a monogrammed handkerchief someone has produced. She catches my eye over their shoulders.
And she smiles.
Not sad, not confused. Triumphant, there and gone in half a heartbeat, so fast that if I blinked I would have missed it.
Then Oliver pulls me through the door and the moment is gone.
In the car, he won’t look at me.
The driver navigates through evening traffic while silence fills the backseat like poison gas. I stare out the window at the city lights blurring past, my hands trembling in my lap.
“What the hell were you thinking?” Oliver finally asks. His voice is cold. Controlled. The voice he uses in negotiations when he’s about to destroy someone and wants them to know it.
“I was thinking that woman is wearing stolen jewelry. My jewelry. My grandmother’s earrings that have been in my family for sixty years.”
“You saw earrings that look similar. Ruby earrings aren’t exactly rare, Maya. They’re not even particularly distinctive. You saw red stones in a woman’s ears and decided they must be yours because you’ve already made up your mind she’s a thief.”
“I know them the way I know my own hands.”
“You thought you knew. And based on that thought, based on a glimpse across a crowded room, you made a scene at my company’s biggest charity event of the year.
” He finally turns to look at me, and his eyes are hard with anger.
“Do you have any idea how this looks? How it makes me look? How it makes us look?”
“I don’t care how it makes you look. I care about the truth.”
“The truth.” He laughs bitterly, shaking his head.
“The truth is that you’ve been jealous and paranoid since Amelia arrived.
You’ve invented this narrative where she’s some kind of villain, some mastermind out to destroy you, and now you’re seeing evidence of her crimes everywhere you look.
Even when the evidence makes no logical sense. ”
“I haven’t invented anything.”
“No? Then explain to me how a woman you’ve accused of theft is stupid enough to wear the stolen items in public.
In front of you. At an event where she knows you’ll be present and will definitely notice.
” His voice drips with condescension. “If Amelia stole your jewelry, why would she flaunt it so brazenly? Why not pawn it, or hide it, or wear it only when you’re not around? ”
I open my mouth to respond and realize I don’t have an answer. He’s right. On the surface, it doesn’t make sense. If Amelia is a thief, she’s not a subtle one.
Unless that’s exactly the point.
“Because she wants me to look crazy,” I say slowly, the realization crystallizing as I speak.
“She’s not stupid, Oliver. She’s calculating.
She knows exactly what she’s doing. She wears my jewelry in front of me because she knows I’ll react, and when I react, everyone sees the hysterical wife making wild accusations. And she gets to play the victim.”
“Do you hear yourself?” He stares at me like I’ve grown a second head. “You’re describing some kind of criminal mastermind. Amelia’s a woman who lost her job and needed help. That’s all. She’s not running some elaborate psychological warfare campaign against you.”
“Maybe you should talk to someone,” he continues when I don’t respond. “A therapist. Someone professional who can help you work through whatever this is. Because this level of paranoia isn’t healthy, Maya. It’s not normal.”
“I don’t need a therapist. I need my husband to believe me.”
“I can’t believe something that doesn’t make logical sense. And this,” he gestures vaguely between us, “doesn’t make sense.”
We ride in silence for another block. The weight of everything unsaid presses down on me until I can barely breathe.
“Pull over.”
“What?”
“Tell the driver to pull over. I need air.”
He signals, and the car eases to the curb. I push open the door and step out onto the sidewalk before he can argue.
“Maya, what are you doing? Get back in the car.”
“I’m walking. I need space. I need to think.” I need to get away from you before I say something I can’t take back. “Go home. Go comfort Amelia. I’m sure she needs a shoulder to cry on after her terrible ordeal.”
“Maya…”
I slam the door and start walking.
I don’t know where I’m going. I just know I can’t be in that car with him for one more second. Can’t listen to him defend her, dismiss me, make me feel like I’m losing my mind.
The evening air is cool against my flushed skin. My heels aren’t made for walking on sidewalks, but I don’t care. The physical discomfort is almost welcome, one concrete thing to focus on instead of the chaos in my head.
I walk for three blocks, my breath coming hard, the anger slowly ebbing into something heavier. Grief, maybe. Or exhaustion. The hollowed-out weight of fighting a battle no one else can see.
My feet are aching, my dress is impractical for a midnight walk through the city, and I’m starting to realize I have no plan. I pull out my phone and order a car, standing under a streetlight until it arrives.
When I slide into the backseat, the driver asks where I want to go. I give him the name of a hotel downtown, somewhere I can sit in the bar and think without anyone recognizing me.
Halfway there, I change my mind.
Chloe is at home. Ms. Yvonne is watching her, but still. I don’t run out on my daughter to spite her father. That’s not who I am. That’s not who I want to be, no matter what Oliver has reduced me to.
“Turn around,” I tell the driver. “Take me home.”
When I get there, I slip in through the side entrance. I can hear Oliver’s voice in the living room, low and urgent, probably on the phone, doing damage control, smoothing over the scene I made at the gala.
I don’t stop to listen.
I take my pillow from our bed, where Oliver is nowhere to be seen, and shut myself in the guest room at the end of the hall.
Let him wonder where I am tonight. Let him feel, for once, what it’s like to reach for someone in the dark and find only empty sheets.