19. Jules
— ? —
Jules
Harry stands in the foyer with his jacket half on and his keys in his hand, looking at me as if I’ve just announced that I’m planning to juggle chainsaws while he’s gone.
“I can reschedule,” he says.
“You’ve rescheduled this dinner twice.”
“I can reschedule again.”
“Harry.” I shift my weight on my crutches. The walking boot is heavier than it looks, and standing in one place for too long makes my good leg ache. “Go to your meeting.”
He doesn’t move. His eyes track over me, cataloging every possible danger a woman might face while standing in her own front hall in leggings and an oversized cardigan.
“You have my number,” he says.
“I’ve had your number for three years.”
“The security panel is right there.” He points at it as though I might have forgotten where it lives. “The code is…”
“I know the code.”
“And the gate…”
“I know about the gate. I know about the panic button in the kitchen and the motion sensors and all seventeen new cameras you installed while I was in the hospital.” I raise an eyebrow. “Did I miss anything? Should we review the fire escape routes?”
His jaw tightens, and I know right away that I shouldn’t have said it.
The fire is still in every room with us. We don’t talk about it much anymore, not directly, but it’s there in the armchair that still sits outside my open door, and in the locks he removed from every door, and in the fact that he has barely let me out of his sight since I came home.
“That’s not funny,” he says quietly.
“No, it isn’t. I’m sorry.”
He exhales and shoves his phone in his pocket, and he still doesn’t leave.
I make my way toward him with my crutches clicking against the hardwood.
His whole body goes still, the way it does when he’s trying not to reach for me.
We’ve been doing this for weeks now, circling each other, touching but not the way we used to, both of us pretending we don’t notice that the air gets heavier every time we’re in the same room.
I stop in front of him. His tie is slightly crooked, and without thinking, I reach up and straighten it.
The silk is smooth under my fingers, and his throat moves when he swallows.
This is the first wifely thing I’ve done since the fire. It’s automatic, pure muscle memory, a gesture that used to be so ordinary I never noticed it.
We both notice now.
His hand comes up and covers mine, pressing my palm flat against his chest. I can feel his heart beating under my fingers, steady but faster than it should be.
“An hour,” he says. “I’ll show my face, skip the food, and be back in an hour.”
“Take your time.”
“I won’t.”
He doesn’t let go of my hand, and I don’t pull it back.
We stand there for a long moment, and I think about how easy it would be to tug him down and kiss him, and tell him to skip the meeting and stay.
I pull my hand back, smooth down his lapel, and step away, balancing on my crutches.
“Go,” I say, and I give him a shove toward the door.
He looks at me for another second. Then he turns, finally, and heads out. He pauses with his hand on the knob.
“An hour,” he repeats.
“I heard you the first time.”
He almost smiles, and I realize that I’m smiling too, in spite of myself. Then he’s gone, and I’m standing alone in the foyer.
I make my way to the living room. I lower myself onto the couch, prop my booted leg on the ottoman, and grab my Kindle from the coffee table.
I make it through half a chapter before the gate buzzes.
I haul myself up onto my crutches and get to the security panel by the front door. The screen shows a silver sedan idling at the entrance, and I don’t recognize it.
The intercom crackles. “Mrs. Winslow? Miss Avery is asking to come in.”
My whole body goes cold.
I stare at the screen. The camera is clear enough that I can see her face through the windshield. I can see the red hair and the pale skin, and the wide eyed expression she does so well, the one that makes her look small and fragile and harmless.
It’s the one that made my husband defend her for years.
Harry has been gone for ten minutes, on the first evening he’s left me alone for work. She must have been sitting out there waiting for his car to leave. I could say no. I could tell them to turn her away, and wait for him to get back. That would be the smart thing and the safe thing.
But I’m so fucking tired of hiding from this woman in my own home.
She locked me in a burning building. She’s been trying to destroy my marriage since before it began. She’s the reason I spent two weeks in a hospital and five more learning to walk again.
I’m done running.
I press the intercom button. “Open the gate.”
“Ma’am, Mr. Winslow said…”
“I know what Mr. Winslow said. Open the gate.”
There’s a pause. “Yes, ma’am.”
I go to the front door and open it before she can knock.
Avery stands on the porch in a cream colored dress that probably cost more than my first apartment. Her hair is down in soft curls around her face. Her eyes are red rimmed, as if she’s been crying, but she always looks as if she’s been crying. It’s her default setting.
“Jules.” Her voice trembles. “Thank you for seeing me.”
I don’t step back and I don’t invite her in. I just stand in the doorway with my crutches planted, blocking the entrance to my home.
“What do you want, Avery?”
“I just…” She wrings her hands and dabs at her eyes with a tissue. “I wanted to talk. Woman to woman. Clear the air.”
“Clear the air.”
“There’s been so much misunderstanding between us. So much hurt. I thought if we could just…”
“Talk.”
“Yes.” She nods eagerly. “Just talk. Without Harry in the middle. Without all the tension.”
I look at her properly. I look at the careful makeup designed to make her seem as if she’s been crying harder than she has, and the dress that shows off her figure while still looking demure, and the slight tremor in her hands that I’m almost certain is calculated.
“Fine,” I say. “Talk.”
She blinks. She wasn’t expecting me to agree so easily.
She takes a breath and steadies herself. “I know you’re angry. I know you have every right to be. But you have to understand, Jules. Harry is the only family I’ve ever had. You know that. He protected me when nobody else did. He was everything to me.”
“I’m aware of your history.”
“Then you know why this is so hard for me.” Her voice cracks. “You came into his life and suddenly I was losing him, the only person who’s ever cared about me. Can you imagine what that feels like? To watch the person you love most in the world slip away?”
I can, actually. I watched it happen every time he took her side over mine.
I don’t say that. I just wait.
“I made mistakes,” she continues. “I was scared, and I handled things badly. But I never meant to hurt you. I just didn’t want to lose him.”
The tears are flowing freely now. They might be real. With Avery, it’s impossible to tell.
“Is that all?” I ask.
Her face flickers, and for a second I see a harder look behind her eyes.
“You took my job,” she says, and the tremor in her voice has an edge to it now. “He fired me three weeks ago. No warning, nothing, just a phone call telling me not to come back. After everything I’ve done for him, everything I’ve sacrificed, he’s throwing me away because of you.”
“He fired someone who spent two years screwing with his marriage. That’s not my doing.”
“I can’t make my rent.” Her chin wobbles. “Do you understand what that means? I’m going to lose my apartment. My home. Everything. Because you couldn’t handle a little competition.”
“Competition,” I repeat. “Is that what you think this was?”
“He felt guilty about me. That’s all it ever was.” She steps closer, and the tears dry up as fast as if she’d flipped a switch. “Guilt is stronger than love, Jules. It’s worked for twenty years. It’ll keep working. You might have him now, but he’ll come back to me eventually. He always does.”
This is the real Avery, the one Harry never let himself see.
“No,” I say. “He won’t.”
“You don’t know him like I do.”
“I know him better than you think. And I know you, Avery, better than I ever wanted to.” I hold her gaze. “You’re already gone. You just haven’t accepted it yet.”
Her face turns ugly for a second before she gets it back under control.
“You’re just the assistant he decided to fuck,” she spits. “A placeholder. He was bored with models so he tried a change. But you’re not special. You’re not family. You’re nothing.”
“And yet I’m the one standing in this doorway, and you’re the one begging to be let in.”
Her hands curl into fists at her sides.
“I’ve loved him since I was nine years old,” she says, and her voice is rising. “I was there when he had nothing and nobody wanted him. Where were you then? You showed up after he made his money and you think that entitles you to…”
“You gave me this same speech in my office two months ago, and it was more convincing before you locked me in a bathroom.” I keep my voice level and calm.
“I showed up and he married me. That’s what you can’t stand.
After twenty years of you hanging on him, manipulating him, making him feel responsible for you, he looked at me and wanted a different life. ”
“He didn’t want anything. You manipulated him. You…”
“I heard you, Avery.”
She stops.
“Through the bathroom door,” I say. “I heard your voice, right before you walked away and left me there.”
Her face goes very still.
“You’re confused,” she says. “You were traumatized. The smoke… you couldn’t have…”
“I know exactly what I heard.”
“I wasn’t anywhere near that bathroom. I was…”
“You said, ‘Let’s see you make your presentation now.’ Then you walked away. It was a stupid, petty plan, by the way. One phone call and I’d have been out of there in five minutes, if the building hadn’t caught fire. And I don’t need to prove any of it, because Harry already believes me.”
Her composure starts to crack.
“He’s wrong,” she says. “He’s confused. You’ve brainwashed him, you’ve turned him against me.”
“I haven’t turned him against anyone. I told him the truth, and he believed me.” I pause. “That’s what really bothers you, isn’t it? He believed me without proof and without hesitation. The night I woke up in that hospital bed, I told him what happened, and he didn’t ask a single question.”
Her face twists.
“Because you nearly died in his building and he can’t stand how that looks,” she hisses. “That’s all it is. Give it time. It’ll wear off, and when it does, he’ll remember who was really there for him. He’ll remember who really loves him. And it’s not you.”
“You’re pathetic.”
The words come out flat and final, and Avery recoils as if I’d slapped her.
“You’ve spent twenty years waiting for a man who sees you as a sister,” I continue, without raising my voice.
“Twenty years convincing yourself that if you just acted helpless enough and needy enough, he’d finally look at you differently.
And he never did, and he never will, because he doesn’t want you, Avery. He never has.”
Her composure shatters.
“It was only supposed to be a meeting!” The words rip out of her, high and frantic. “You were only supposed to miss your stupid presentation! I wanted them to see that you’re flaky and incompetent, that you don’t deserve to be there, that you don’t deserve him!”
I go very still.
“I only locked the door,” she says, and her voice is climbing, getting louder and more hysterical. “I didn’t start the fire. I just wanted you to miss the meeting and look bad in front of everyone. I didn’t know there was going to be a fire!”
“Avery.”
“It’s not my fault you didn’t get out! It’s not my fault the ceiling collapsed! I only locked the door! That’s all I did! I only locked the door!”
She’s screaming now, actually screaming, with her face red and blotchy and tears streaming down her cheeks.
And I feel nothing.
I thought I’d feel vindicated when she finally admitted it, or furious. All I feel is tired and empty and ready for this to be over.
“I only locked the door,” she repeats, almost to herself now. “That’s all. I didn’t mean for you to get hurt. I didn’t mean…”
“Avery.”
The voice comes from behind her, low and cold and absolutely deadly.
Avery freezes.
I look past her, and my breath stops.
Harry is standing at the edge of the porch. His car is still running in the driveway with the driver’s door hanging open. His phone is still in his hand, and his face is completely blank.
The gate must have called him the second her car pulled up.
And from the look in his eyes, he heard every word.