Chapter 10 – DAMON
DAMON
Emily had stopped using the chair across from my desk. She sat on the edge of it instead, hip against the wood, close. She'd lean over the printouts until her shoulder was on mine. When she made a point she put her hand on my arm, and the hand stayed a while after the point was made.
That was just Emily. She'd been like it since school, with everyone, the board, the bench techs. It didn't mean anything.
We'd been at the cohort since eight. The afternoon-readings problem had opened up into a full re-run of the numbers, and she moved through it quicker than my own people did.
There was a rhythm to working with her I'd forgotten.
She'd start a sentence and I'd finish it.
I'd tap a figure and she was already three steps down the line of what had caused it.
"You still bite your pen when you don't believe a number," she said. "You did it through all of organic chem. Drove me insane." She nodded at my hand. The pen was already between my teeth, and I hadn't noticed putting it there. I took it out.
She'd known me before any of this. Sitting next to her, the old version of me turned back up without being asked for.
She'd kicked her shoes off at some point and had one foot tucked under her.
She was eating the pretzels out of my drawer without asking.
It was easy, easier than the rest of my day, and I'd been in the building since before six without once wanting to leave it.
I put the pen down and went back to the data. The work was good. The rest was background.
Reese put his head in before noon with the investors' dinner binder under his arm.
"Sorry to interrupt. Thursday's seating. Somebody's draft has the Ardmonts next to the Browns again, and that's how we got the wine situation last year. I wanted to check it was deliberate before I move anyone."
"That's Maddie's wheelhouse," I said without looking up from the research in front of me. "Ask her."
"I tried. Texted her yesterday, and again this morning." He shifted the binder to his other arm. "She hasn't gotten back to me."
That stopped me. The investor dinner ran on Maddie.
I didn't really know how it got made, only that it always did, finished and on time, every year, and I had never asked how.
Most of my life outside work was like that.
The house stayed warm without my help. The car was always at the curb.
Maddie ran all of it from somewhere I'd never thought to look.
I'd watched her work one of these once, the first investor dinner after we married.
A senator's wife said something to a board member's wife and the whole table went cold, and Maddie had a waiter between them with a fresh bottle before I'd even felt the temperature drop.
She moved a place card. She laughed at the right moment.
By the entrée the two women were trading recipes.
I'd thought, that's a useful skill to have acquired through marriage. I never thought past useful.
"Move the Ardmonts," I said. "Anywhere. The Browns are top priority, their family is responsible for funding half the new line. I'll sort the rest." Reese nodded and went.
Maddie always answered. I picked up my phone and called her.
It rang out. I called again. Voicemail, her voice asking me to leave a message. I'd heard that recording maybe twice the whole marriage. She always picked up.
I didn't leave a message. I texted her instead. You're not answering Reese. Or me. Everything ok?
I watched the screen. No dots came up. Nothing came back.
Mark caught me in the hall near four. He clocked the phone face up in my hand and looked at me.
"You alright?"
"Maddie's not answering," I said, before I'd decided to say it.
Mark went still. "Since when does Maddie not answer the phone?"
"That's the question."
He didn't push it. He didn't have to.
By the end of the afternoon there was still nothing.
I tried her once more between calls and got the recording again.
I thought about ringing the house to ask if she was even home.
I didn't. I wasn't ready to have someone go through my own house looking for my wife.
But maybe it was time I went home early, just to make sure everything was alright.
"You've got a face." Emily was back with two coffees. She set one by my hand and watched me over the top of hers. "Everything alright?"
"Fine. My wife's gone quiet."
She tilted her head. "Quiet how?"
"She's not answering. She doesn't do that."
Emily settled back onto the edge of the desk and pulled the printouts toward her. "I'm sure it's nothing. People get busy." She found her place in the numbers without looking up. "Probably on a shopping trip or something."
There was nothing biting in the words. They were neutral, and I told myself I was imagining anything else.
We worked another hour. When she finally stretched and reached for her shoes, she did it slowly.
"We could keep going over dinner," she said. "That place on Wilkins still does the late table. Do you remember how we practically lived there?"
For a second I was going to say yes. Then the phone lit up on the desk, and it was Reese, not Maddie, and I put it down.
"Another night," I said. "I should get home."
Emily looked at me a moment, then shrugged and let it go.
I gathered my things and put the phone in my breast pocket so I'd feel it if it buzzed. It didn't.
The house was dark when I got home. No dinner smell, no kitchen light, no Maddie on the stairs. I called her name in the front hall. I couldn't remember the last time I'd had to. Nothing came back.
Then I saw it. A line of light under a door at the far end of the east hall.
The studio. I'd had it built for her our first year, and I couldn't have told you the last time the light was on in it.
Music, low, behind the door. I stood on the cold floor and looked at the strip of it on the boards.
A shadow passed over the light, and I realized she was in there. Painting.
In eight years Maddie had never let my call go to voicemail. I couldn't remember the last time Maddie had been in that studio.
A part of me wanted to knock, to ask why the hell she'd been ignoring my calls, but I didn't. Some conversations were better off had in the morning.