Chapter 3
Claire
My sister had three bags of medication instructions, two jackets, and no intention of letting anybody help her put on either one.
I waited until she got the sleeve halfway up her injured arm.
“Would you like assistance,” I asked, “or should I enjoy this as a spectator?”
She looked at me. “You're enjoying it already.”
“Only a little.”
She surrendered the jacket.
The nurse went over the discharge notes with us again.
Follow-up appointments. What changes meant we should call.
Rest, which I suspected would require negotiation.
Audrey listened seriously and asked two practical questions.
She had always been excellent with instructions when they came from somebody who wasn't related to her.
Ethan met us outside the room.
He was wearing clean clothes, but he still looked as though he had forgotten how sleep worked.
“My driver can take you,” he said.
“I've got the car,” I answered.
He looked at Audrey rather than arguing with me. Good. A minimum standard, but we had to begin somewhere.
“I'll text when we arrive,” she said.
He nodded. “I'll be at the estate response meeting until three. The house knows you're collecting things.”
No surprise departure. No hiding behind curtains while a billionaire hunted for his missing wife. Audrey had told him she was staying with me. She hadn't told him for how long.
He appeared to be surviving the uncertainty, though he plainly disliked it.
“Do you have everything you need?” he asked.
“For today.”
It was a small answer. He accepted it as though it weighed a great deal.
Outside, January slapped us both across the face. I got Audrey into the car, put the heat on, and tucked the hospital papers into the glove compartment.
“Your car smells like coffee,” she said.
“That's because I have a personality.”
“And a leak in your travel mug.”
“Two things can be true.”
She rested her head against the seat. I drove carefully over every uneven patch of road, which made the journey through Boston take approximately a hundred years.
The townhouse in Beacon Hill looked untouched by anything unfortunate. Clean windows. Neat steps. A wreath somebody had replaced with winter greenery at the proper social moment.
Inside, the housekeeper greeted Audrey gently and offered tea.
“I'm just collecting a few things,” Audrey said.
I heard the effort in the word just.
Upstairs, their bedroom had the polished quiet of a magazine photograph. His watch lay beside a book. Her side held a lamp, a glass, and a bowl for earrings.
I knew that bowl. Audrey had bought it at a craft market with money from her first independent commission. Ethan's mother had once called it charming in a tone normally reserved for a child's drawing.
I put it in the bag.
Audrey noticed and nodded.
“What else?” I asked.
“The gray sweaters. Jeans. Underwear. Nothing with a zip up the back. I don't want to negotiate with clothing.”
At least her sense of humor had come home with her.
She sat while I folded. I resisted the urge to ask how many of the dresses he'd bought and how many of them she'd worn while waiting for him. That question would have pleased me and helped her not at all.
On the desk in the adjoining room, drawings lay beneath an expensive paperweight. The estate library. A hotel entrance. A staircase with Audrey's notes in the margins.
I picked up one sheet. “Did you get paid for this?”
“Not separately.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning we were married, and it became easier not to discuss it.”
I put the sheet down more carefully than I wanted to.
My job was keeping books for small businesses. Numbers could be slippery, but at least they admitted they were numbers. Families preferred to call unpaid work love and act surprised when somebody asked where the money went.
“Take the records,” I said.
“I am.”
She indicated two drives, her laptop, and a folder marked with the estate name. She wasn't leaving her professional history behind because her marriage had become intolerable.
Good.
In the bedroom, she stood beside the bed for a long time.
I pretended to check the bag's zipper.
Then she pulled off her ring.
There was no speech. No dramatic throw. She placed it on the bedside table and wrote a note on the pad Ethan used for reminders.
I'm safe. I'm staying with Claire. Please arrange calls with me first. I need time to decide what comes next.
She read it, crossed out an apology at the bottom, and left the pen beside it.
I liked the crossed-out apology most.
“Ready?” I asked.
“No.”
We stood together another moment.
Then she picked up her bag. “Let's go anyway.”
In the car, Audrey looked at the bags behind us.
“Should I have taken more?”
“You can collect things later.”
“I know. It feels strange.”
I waited at a red light while a cyclist crossed in front of us.
She had taken very little jewelry. I knew because I'd packed the little case myself. Most of what mattered to her had fitted into notebooks, drives, and clothes soft enough to sleep in.
“The house won't disappear because you don't finish deciding today,” I said.
She looked at me, then out of the window.
“I don't want to make a dramatic exit and come back tomorrow for my toothbrush.”
“Then buy a toothbrush. They're surprisingly available to the general public.”
Her mouth twitched.
“I did pack one.”
“Excellent. Our revolution has dental care.”
She laughed quietly and closed her eyes. I turned the radio down before she had to ask.
My apartment was less impressive. The radiator had begun its seasonal attempt to communicate with submarines, and a neighbor was frying onions somewhere beneath us.
Audrey paused in the doorway.
“I cleaned,” I said defensively.
“I wasn't going to say anything.”
“You looked.”
“At the flowers.”
I had put supermarket tulips in a measuring jug because I couldn't find the vase. The vase turned out to contain pens, but by then the tulips had made themselves at home.
“They're lovely,” she said.
I showed her my room.
“No,” she said immediately.
“Yes.”
“Claire, I'm not taking your bed.”
“You're taking the bed closest to the bathroom, and I'm taking the sofa that I purchased specifically because it becomes a bed. This is its chance to fulfill its destiny.”
She touched the duvet. Huge yellow flowers marched across a field of pink.
“Was this on sale?”
“Deeply.”
“I can see why.”
Her laugh caught in a cough. I waited without patting her or producing twelve solutions. When she caught her breath, I handed her water.
She drank and sat down.
“You can tell me if I'm unbearable,” she said.
“Oh, I intend to.”
For the first time that day, her shoulders lowered.
I made toast and soup. She ate half, then fell asleep with one hand beneath her cheek.
I closed the bedroom door most of the way and took my laptop to the kitchen.
Three clients still needed their month-end figures.
My sister's life had cracked open, but the bakery's payroll continued to possess astonishing confidence in its own importance.
Ethan called at four.
“She's resting,” I said.
“Did she get there all right?”
“Yes. She said she'd text when she woke.”
A pause. “Did she take her portfolio?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
I had expected a different answer and distrusted him slightly more for surprising me.
“Claire, is there anything—”
“Don't ask me to tell you what she's thinking.”
“I was going to ask whether you needed anything for the apartment.”
“We have furniture.”
“I know.”
“And forks.”
“I know.”
I rubbed my forehead. “We're fine for tonight.”
“Thank you.”
After I hung up, I sat staring at the spreadsheet until the numbers lost their shape.
I wanted to dislike him without complication. Unfortunately, people who hurt somebody you love do not always have the decency to be monsters in every other respect.
Audrey emerged near dinner, her hair flattened on one side.
“He called?”
I nodded.
“What did you say?”
“That you're resting. That we own forks.”
She looked at me for a moment and almost smiled.
Then I ruined it.
“You should speak to a divorce lawyer.”
Her expression closed.
“Eventually, perhaps.”
“Before he starts convincing you—”
“Claire.”
I stopped.
She gripped the back of a chair. “I have spent years making decisions around somebody else's urgency. I can't do that here too.”
There were several defensive things I could have said. I loved her. I was worried. I had watched this happen.
All true. None useful.
“You're right,” I said. “I'm sorry.”
She sat.
I put tea in front of her and returned to my own chair.
After a while, she opened her laptop. I heard a few keys, a pause, then several more.
“Work?” I asked.
“Maybe.”
She turned the screen so I could see.
Daniel,
Are you still looking for someone for the Ashby project?
She held her finger over the trackpad.
I kept my mouth shut.
Then she clicked send.