Chapter 10
Rose
The two weeks between the invitation and the showcase become the most alive I have felt in years.
I work in the small room every night after dinner.
Jack is often in his study, calls bleeding through the walls, the familiar rhythm of his professional life continuing unchanged.
But for once, his absence does not hollow me out.
I have something that belongs to me. Fabric samples cover the desk.
Pencils dull beneath my fingers. I make mistakes—a seam that refuses to lie flat, a collar that sits wrong—and instead of frustration, I feel a kind of fierce joy.
The joy of problems that are mine to solve.
The joy of creating something that did not exist before I decided it should.
I choose what I will wear to the showcase.
Not one of my own pieces—they’re not finished yet, and anyway, showing up in your own design feels too much like a statement I’m not ready to make.
Instead, I select a simple black dress from the back of my closet, something I bought years ago and rarely wore because it felt too plain for the Ashford events that dominate our social calendar.
Plain is what I want. I want the clothes to speak. Not me.
The night before the showcase, I lie in bed and allow myself to imagine it.
Not in the anxious, rehearsing-catastrophe way I usually approach events, but properly.
Deliberately. Jack standing beside me while someone—a boutique owner, a stylist, another designer—admires something I created.
Me answering questions about construction or inspiration.
Jack listening. Jack seeing me as something other than the woman who waits for him.
The fantasy is so vivid it makes my chest ache.
I have not allowed myself to want things this specifically in longer than I can remember.
Wanting has always felt dangerous. Wanting opens the door to disappointment, and disappointment, in our marriage, has become something I ration carefully, like a resource too scarce to waste on small hopes.
But this hope does not feel small. It feels enormous. Fragile. Precious.
The afternoon of the showcase arrives. I finish the final adjustments on my pieces. The dresses are bagged and ready. I’ve arranged for a car—not our usual driver; someone separate, something that feels like mine. The showcase begins at seven. I plan to arrive at six-thirty, set up, breathe.
At four-thirty, Jack’s phone rings.
I am in the kitchen making tea. I hear his voice change. The particular alertness that enters his tone when Melissa calls with a problem. His sentences shorten. His pace quickens. I do not need to eavesdrop to understand what’s happening. The pattern is too familiar to mistake.
He appears in the doorway ten minutes later. His hair is mussed from running his hands through it. His eyes have that particular focus they get when the company is bleeding.
“There’s an issue with the Singapore server migration,” he says. “Melissa’s team found a vulnerability in the codebase. If we push the update tonight, we could expose every user’s payment data.”
“Jesus.” The concern is automatic. Genuine. Whatever is happening between us, I don’t want Jack’s company to fail. “How bad is it?”
“Bad enough that I should probably go in. Melissa’s assembling the engineering leads now. We need to patch and test before the Asian markets open.”
I look at him. His mind is already there. Already in that office, already shoulder-to-shoulder with Melissa, already disappearing into the particular intimacy of shared crisis that has always belonged to the two of them.
“The showcase is at seven,” I say. Just once. Just the facts. No pleading. No “please don’t go.” Just the reminder, delivered calmly, as though I am mentioning the weather.
Jack’s face does something complicated. I watch the conflict move through him—the husband who promised, the CEO who cannot ignore this problem, the man caught between two obligations he believes are equally legitimate.
“I know,” he says. “I’ll try to wrap this up quickly. Text me the address?”
I nod. I do not say: You already have the address. I sent it to you two weeks ago, the day after you promised to come.
I do not say: This is important to me.
I do not say: Please choose me, just once.
I have reminded him once. I will not remind him again. I want, with a clarity that surprises me, for Jack to remember something important to me without being managed into remembering. I want his presence to be voluntary. Earned. Given rather than extracted through the labor of my own neediness.
He kisses my forehead. Gathers his keys. His laptop. His attention has already left the building.
“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” he says from the doorway.
I believe he means it. Jack is not a liar. He intends, in this moment, to solve the crisis and still make it to my showcase. His intentions have always been good. His intentions have never been the problem.
The problem is what happens to good intentions when they collide with the gravitational pull of everything else that matters to Jack Ashford.
I finish my tea. The kitchen is very quiet.
At five-fifteen, I text him the address. I do not add anything else. No “please hurry.” No “I really want you there.” Just the location, neutral as a weather report.
Then I gather my dresses. I check my hair in the hall mirror. I straighten my shoulders.
And I leave for the showcase alone.