4. Harry
— ? —
Harry
I wake up at six and Jules is already out of bed.
The call itself was nothing. Avery thought the man from the garage was outside her building, and I told her to call her building’s security and hung up after two minutes.
I didn’t think it was worth waking Jules for, and by the time I got back to bed it was too late to explain without making it sound bigger than it was.
I lie there for a few minutes, listening to the water and trying to figure out how to start this day.
The shower turns off. I hear her moving around, opening drawers, and then the click of a makeup compact. I should get up and go in there and talk to her.
I stay in bed and wait.
She comes out twenty minutes later, fully dressed in a green blouse and black slacks, with her hair blown dry and her makeup done. She doesn’t look at me.
“Hey,” I say.
“Hey.”
She crosses to the closet and pulls out a pair of heels. I watch her step into them, and I watch her check her reflection in the full length mirror.
“Jules,” I start.
“I have a big presentation at two. I need to get to the office early.”
“Can we talk for a minute?”
“About what?”
I sit up in bed. She still hasn’t looked at me. “About last night.”
“What’s there to talk about?” She picks up her bag from the chair by the window. “Avery called at one in the morning on our anniversary, and you got out of our bed to answer. I think that covers it.”
“It was two minutes.”
“I don’t care how long it was.”
“Then what do you care about?”
She finally looks at me. Her expression is flat and controlled, the professional face she wears in meetings when she doesn’t want anyone to know what she’s thinking.
“I care that she called at all,” she says. “I care that you answered. I care that no matter what she does, and no matter how many times she puts herself between us, you always have a reason why it’s fine, and why I should understand, and why I’m the one being unreasonable.”
“I’ve never said you were unreasonable.”
“You’ve never had to say it. It’s implied every time you make excuses for her.” She slings her bag over her shoulder. “I have to go.”
“Let me make you coffee first.”
“I’ll get some at the office.”
She walks out of the bedroom. I hear her footsteps on the stairs, the jingle of her keys, and the front door opening and closing.
I have made that woman coffee every morning for two years, and I sit there in the empty bed for a long time before I get up and get ready for work.
***
The drive to the office is quiet. I don’t turn on the radio. I just drive and think about the look on Jules’ face when she walked out, that careful blankness that’s worse than anger, because anger would at least mean she still wants to fight with me.
At the office I go through my morning on autopilot, with emails and a call I can barely focus on and a stack of papers that need my signature.
At ten-thirty, my door opens without a knock.
Jules walks in, shuts the door behind her, and sits in the chair across from my desk. Her face is still blank, but there’s tension in her shoulders.
“Do you have a few minutes?”
“For you? Always.”
She doesn’t smile. She takes out her phone, sets it on the desk between us, and dials a number on speaker. It rings twice before a man picks up, and I recognize the voice of the ma?tre d’ from last night.
“Mrs. Winslow, of course. How can I help?”
“I need you to tell my husband what you told me an hour ago,” Jules says. “Did anyone from your restaurant call his office yesterday to move our reservation?”
“No, ma’am. Nobody here called anyone. Your table was booked for seven, and it stayed booked for seven until Mr. Winslow didn’t show.”
“Thank you. That’s all I needed.”
She hangs up, and my office is very quiet.
“She told me the restaurant called,” I say. “She said they were overbooked and had to push us back.”
“I know what she told you. Now you know it was bullshit.” She leaves the phone where it is.
“And here’s the other thing I can’t get past. Her text, the night before.
We came home from that dinner and didn’t talk to a soul, and by midnight she’s texting you about how badly it went because of me. How did she know, Harry?”
I don’t have an answer, and she can see that I don’t.
“I don’t want her hanged,” Jules says. “I want you to look at what’s right in front of you and tell me what you see.”
What I see is a mix up and an assistant having a bad day. Avery juggles a hundred things for me before lunch, and one wrong time on a busy afternoon doesn’t add up to a plot, no matter how shitty the timing was.
I also see my wife sitting across from me, waiting, and I know that isn’t the answer she wants.
“I’ll talk to her,” I say.
“Do that.”
I pick up my phone and call Avery’s extension. “Can you come to my office? I need to see you.”
“Of course, Mr. Winslow. Is everything okay?”
“Just come.”
I hang up, and Jules and I wait in silence. I can hear the clock on my wall ticking and the muffled sounds of the office outside my door. A minute passes, and then two.
Then there’s a knock, and Avery steps inside.
She’s wearing a blue dress today, with her red hair pulled back in a neat ponytail. When she sees Jules sitting across from me she hesitates for a second, and then her face settles into polite professionalism.
“You wanted to see me?”
“Close the door.”
She does, and she stands in the middle of the room with her hands clasped in front of her.
“Avery, the restaurant says nobody called to move my reservation last night. You told me they did.”
Her eyes widen. “They said that? I don’t…” She presses a hand to her chest, and her face crumples. “Oh god, Harry, I’m so sorry. The restaurant called, and I was in the middle of three other things, and I must have typed the wrong time. I didn’t even realize.”
“They didn’t call, Avery. We just had them on the phone.”
Avery’s lower lip trembles, and tears spring to her eyes.
“I don’t understand. I could have sworn someone called.
Maybe it was a different restaurant? Maybe I got the calls mixed up?
There were so many things happening that day, and I was trying to keep track of everything for you.
” Her voice breaks. “I would never try to ruin your anniversary. You have to know that. You have to believe me.”
“You told Harry you’d sent me a message about the new time,” Jules says. It’s the first time she’s spoken since Avery walked in. “Show it to me.”
Avery’s hand goes to her phone and stops. “It must not have gone through. The signal in this building is terrible.”
“You also had his phone in your hands for ten minutes last night,” Jules says, “and it came back on silent.”
“I must have hit the switch by accident. My hands were shaking.”
“And the dinner the night before?” Jules says. “How did you know it went badly?”
Avery turns to her with wet eyes. “His people sent a furious message about the way you walked out. It said you’d thrown away a year of work over your wife. It came in around eleven. I saw it and I was worried about Harry, that’s all.”
“You saw it,” Jules says. “In his inbox. Before he did.”
Avery’s mouth opens and closes. I told her years ago to go through my messages, back when there got to be too many for me to keep up with, so it doesn’t prove a damn thing. I still hear how it sounds.
The tears are streaming down her cheeks now. She’s shaking, with her hands pressed together in front of her chest, looking at me with the wide wet eyes I’ve known since we were children.
“It was an accident,” she says. “It had to be. I’m so sorry. I’ll be more careful, I promise. I’ll double check everything from now on. Please, Harry. You know me. You know I would never hurt you on purpose.”
I look at Jules. Her face is completely closed off, with no sympathy and no softening, and she watches Avery cry with cold attention.
I look back at Avery, at the tears and the trembling and the desperate need for me to believe her and forgive her and make this okay.
I’ve seen this a thousand times, ever since we were kids. She’d come find me crying and shaking, and I was always the one who made it better, and I was always the one she could count on.
“Okay,” I hear myself say. “Just be more careful next time.”
“I will. I promise.” She wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. “Thank you for understanding. Thank you for believing me.” She looks at Jules. “I’m so sorry, Jules. I really am. I never meant to cause any problems.”
Jules doesn’t respond.
I reach for the tissue box on my desk and hold it out to Avery. She takes one and dabs at her eyes, and her breathing is still shaky.
“Go take a few minutes,” I say. “Get some water and wash your face. It’s fine.”
“Thank you, Harry.” She clutches the tissue in her hand. “Thank you.”
She slips out of the office and closes the door behind her.
The silence she leaves behind is heavy.
“Harry,” Jules says.
“I know what you’re going to say.”
“Do you?”
I run a hand through my hair. “She made a mistake. She got confused. It was a busy day and she mixed things up.”
“Do you actually believe that?”
I don’t answer, because I don’t know how to answer.
“You just handed her a tissue from your own desk while I sat here and watched,” Jules says.
“I wasn’t comforting her. I was just…”
“You were doing what you always do.” Jules stands up. “You were making excuses and smoothing things over, and treating her like a child who can’t be held responsible for her own actions.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Isn’t it?” She moves around the desk until she’s right in front of my chair.
“I have asked you for very few things in this marriage. I don’t complain about the late nights or the missed dinners or the way work always comes first. I understand who you are and what drives you, and I love you anyway. ”
“I know you do.”
“I am asking you for one thing.” Her voice is steady, but I can see the tension in her jaw and the tightness around her eyes. “I want her out. Out of the company and out of our lives, permanently.”
“Jules…”
“I understand why you feel responsible for her. I understand that you grew up together, that she doesn’t have anyone else, that you feel an obligation.
But we are all adults. She is twenty-seven years old.
She has a job, my old job, which you gave her, and an apartment and a salary and every advantage a person could ask for.
She is capable of taking care of herself. ”
“It’s not that simple.”
“It is exactly that simple. You just don’t want it to be.”
I stand up, and we’re face to face now, inches apart. I can see the hurt in her eyes, and the anger she’s barely holding in check, and the exhaustion of having the same fight over and over again.
“Jules, I can’t just throw her out. Not without…”
“Without what? More evidence? A signed confession?” Her voice rises. “How much proof do you need before you’ll believe what’s right in front of your face?”
“This isn’t about proof.”
“Then what the hell is it about? Loyalty? Obligation?” Her voice cracks. “What about your loyalty to me? What about your obligation to your wife?”
“You know I love you more than anything.”
“Then act like it.”
We stand there with neither of us moving and neither of us backing down.
“I’m not asking you to die for me,” she says quietly. “I’m asking you to pick your wife. Her or me.”
I open my mouth, and no answer comes.
Avery has no one else. We survived the same childhood, the same loneliness and the same feeling of being unwanted, and I’ve looked out for her for twenty years and I don’t know how to stop.
And I honestly don’t understand why I have to, when there is nothing between Avery and me that takes anything away from my wife.
But Jules is my wife, and Jules is everything, and she’s standing in front of me asking me to prove it, and I can’t make the words come.
“That’s what I thought,” she says softly.
“Jules, wait.”
“Then I need to think about whether I can stay in this marriage.” Her voice doesn’t waver. “If you can’t choose me over her, I need to think about what that means.”
For a second I can’t breathe.
“You can’t…” I grab her arms and back her up against the edge of my desk. “Leaving is not on the table. It’s not. I won’t let you.”
“You won’t let me?”
“That’s not what I meant.” I cup her face in my hands. “I can’t lose you. Do you understand? I can’t. You’re my whole world. There is nothing and no one that matters to me more than you.”
“Then prove it.”
I kiss her.
It’s not gentle. It’s desperate and rough and full of all the fear I can’t put into words, and I’m trying to convince her to stay with my mouth because I’ve run out of arguments.
For a moment she kisses me back. For a moment her hands grip my shirt and her body presses against mine, and I think maybe this will be okay.
Then she puts her hands on my chest and pushes.
I stumble back. She’s breathing hard, with her lips swollen and her eyes bright with tears she won’t let fall. In three years she has never once been the one to pull away from me, and now she has.
“Jules…”
“I have to be ready by two.” She straightens her blouse and runs a hand through her hair. “I need to prepare.”
“Please. Let’s talk about this.”
“We just did.” She walks toward the door, and I can’t make myself move to stop her. “I need some time to think, Harry. I can’t keep having this same fight.”
She opens the door.
“Jules.”
She pauses but doesn’t turn around.
“I love you,” I say. “Whatever happens, I love you.”
She walks out without looking back.
I stand there in my empty office with my heart pounding and my hands shaking, staring at the door she just closed behind her.
For the first time since I married her, I don’t know if my wife is coming home tonight.