3. Elise
ELISE
Mara's building was familiar. I'd walked past it a hundred times over the years, and each time I expected to feel something other than what I felt, which was nothing in particular.
I rang the buzzer and waited.
"Come on up." Her voice crackled through the speaker, warm and easy, the way it always was.
The elevator was slow. I watched the numbers climb and tried to remember when I'd last been here. Three weeks ago, maybe four. Long enough that she'd ask if everything was fine, and I'd say yes, and we'd both pretend that was the truth.
The door to her apartment was already open when I reached it. Mara stood in the hallway with a dish towel in her hands, smiling like she'd been waiting there the whole time.
"Elise." She hugged me quickly, the dish towel damp against my shoulder. "You look good."
"Thanks." I stepped inside and set my bag on the chair by the door. "Sorry I'm late."
"You're not late." She waved me toward the living room. "I just put the kettle on. Go sit."
The apartment smelled like bread and something sweet I couldn't place, probably cinnamon or vanilla from whatever she'd been baking.
Patrick's jacket hung on a hook near the door, and there were toys scattered across the rug where the kids had been playing before he took them out.
The whole place had the kind of comfortable mess I'd stopped keeping in my own home years ago, back when I'd first married Graham and still thought we'd have kids of our own.
I sat on the couch and tried not to think about that.
Mara disappeared into the kitchen, and I heard the clatter of mugs and the kettle starting to whistle.
I folded my hands in my lap and waited, looking around at the framed photos on the wall.
Most of them were of the boys, but there were a few older ones mixed in.
One of Mara and me from college, both of us laughing at something I couldn't remember anymore.
Another of her wedding, Patrick looking at her like she was the only person in the room.
I turned away from it.
"How have you been?" she called from the kitchen.
"Good," I said, loud enough for her to hear. "Busy."
"Aren't you always?" She came back with two mugs and handed me one.
The tea was too hot to drink, so I held it and let the heat settle into my palms. Mara sat across from me in the chair Patrick usually claimed, tucking her legs underneath her the way she'd done since we were kids.
"Patrick took the boys to the park. I told him you were coming, and he said to say hi. "
"Tell him hi back."
She smiled and blew on her tea. There was a pause, comfortable but stretching a little too long, and I could feel her looking at me the way she always did when she was trying to figure out if something was wrong. I kept my face still and took a sip of tea even though it scalded my tongue.
"So," she said. "What have you been painting?"
The question landed like it always did, soft and harmless, and I hated that it made my chest tighten anyway. I set the mug down on the table and shrugged.
"Just sketches," I said. "Nothing serious."
"Sketches of what?"
God, she never let anything go. "Color studies, mostly. Testing palettes."
"That sounds like you." She laughed a little. "You were always so particular about your colors. I remember in school you'd spend an hour mixing the exact shade you wanted and then decide it was wrong and start over."
I smiled because she was right and because it was easier than saying anything else.
The truth was I didn't want to talk about the painting.
I didn't want to explain that I'd been working on the same canvas for weeks and couldn't figure out why it wasn't right, or that the only place I painted was a room nobody knew about, or that I'd put my brush down the day I married Graham and hadn't picked it up anywhere else since.
I didn't want to tell her any of that because once I started I wouldn't be able to stop, and then she'd know, and I wasn't ready for anyone to know.
Not even Mara.
"Yeah," I said. "Some things don't change."
Mara didn't press. She never did. That was the thing about her. She asked her questions and let me answer however I wanted, and if I kept it small, she let me keep it small. I didn't know if that made her the best friend I had or the worst, but either way, I was grateful for it.
"How was your week?" I asked, steering us away from anything that might circle back to me.
She brightened immediately. "Oh God, crazy.
Patrick's mother came to visit on Tuesday, and you know how that goes.
She walked in, looked at the kitchen, and told me it wasn't organized efficiently.
Then she rearranged my entire pantry while I was at the grocery store.
I came home and couldn't find the spatulas for twenty minutes. "
I laughed, and it felt good, like something loosening in my chest. "Did you say anything?"
"Are you kidding? I thanked her." Mara rolled her eyes. "Then I waited until she left on Thursday and put everything back exactly the way it was before. Patrick told me I was being petty, but I don't care. It's my kitchen."
"Smart."
"Survival," she said, grinning. "You can't win with that woman, so you just smile and nod and then do whatever you were going to do anyway. It's the only way."
I nodded, thinking of Beatrice and the way she looked at me like I was something stuck to the bottom of her shoe. Mara's situation wasn't the same, but it was close enough that I understood.
"And then yesterday," Mara continued, "Liam decided he wanted to be a firefighter, so now every conversation in this house is about fire trucks and hoses and whether he's brave enough to run into a burning building.
He's five, Elise. Five. He asked Patrick if he could practice putting out a fire, and Patrick had to explain that we don't have any fires to put out and that's a good thing. "
"He's always been dramatic."
"He gets it from Patrick's side." She said it like she was offended, but she was smiling. "Anyway, it's been a lot. But good, you know? Exhausting, but good. I can't complain."
I nodded. I didn't know how it was, not really, but I knew how to nod and smile and make the right sounds so she thought I did.
She talked for a while longer about the boys and Patrick's work and a new restaurant they'd tried last weekend that she didn't think was worth the price.
Something Italian that had gotten a glowing review in the Times, but the portions were tiny and the pasta was overcooked and she could've made better at home.
I listened and asked small questions and let her fill the space between us with the kind of ordinary details that made up her life.
It was easy to listen to. It required nothing from me except a few words here and there, and I could give her that much without giving anything else.
My tea was cold by the time she finished, and I realized I'd barely touched it.
"I should probably go," I said, setting the mug on the table.
"Already?" Mara looked disappointed but didn't argue. She never argued. "Okay. But don't wait so long next time, all right? It's been a month since I saw you."
"I won't."
She stood and walked me to the door, and I picked up my bag from the chair where I'd left it. She hugged me again, tighter this time, and I wondered if she knew I was lying. Probably. Mara had always been good at reading me, even when I didn't want to be read.
"Love you," she said.
"Love you too."
I took the elevator back down and walked out into the street.
The air was cooler than it had been when I arrived, and I pulled my jacket tighter as I headed toward the subway.
The sun was starting to sink lower in the sky, casting long shadows across the sidewalk, and I could feel the weight of the afternoon settling over me like something heavy I couldn't shake off.
I didn't want to go home. Graham would be at the gallery until late, probably past nine or ten, and home would be empty.
I'd spend the evening pretending I had something to do other than wait for him to come back, and then when he did come back, he'd be tired and distracted and we'd exchange maybe ten words before he disappeared into his office to finish whatever he'd brought home with him.
I couldn't do it. Not tonight.
So I didn't go home.
I went to the house instead.
It was a brownstone on the Upper West Side that Graham and I had bought eleven years ago as an investment.
We'd talked about renovating it, turning it into something we could sell or rent, but we'd never gotten around to it.
Graham was too busy with the gallery, and I was too busy helping him, and the house just sat there, empty and waiting.
Nobody asked me why I went there. Graham assumed I was overseeing contractors or checking on the property, and I let him assume whatever he wanted.
I unlocked the front door and stepped inside.
The air was stale and cool, and my footsteps echoed against the wood floors as I walked through the front hall and up the stairs.
The house still smelled faintly of old paint and plaster, the kind of smell that stuck in places nobody lived in.
I didn't turn on any lights. I knew the way by heart, even in the dark.
The room was on the third floor, tucked into the back corner where nobody would think to look.
I'd found it the first time we toured the house, a strange little space that had probably been a maid's quarters once, barely big enough for a bed and a dresser.
Graham hadn't even glanced at it. But I'd known immediately what I wanted it for.
I unlocked the door and went inside.
The canvases were stacked against the walls, some finished, some half-done, all of them unseen by anyone except me.
There were brushes in jars on the windowsill and tubes of paint scattered across the old table I'd dragged up here years ago, back when I'd first claimed the room as mine.
The light was good in the afternoons, coming in through the single window that looked out over the narrow alley behind the building, and I'd learned to work fast in the hour or two I could steal between everything else.
I pulled the canvas I'd been working on from the stack and set it on the easel.
It was a study in blues, dark at the edges and fading toward the center, but something about it wasn't right.
The transition was too sharp, too sudden.
I'd been trying to soften it for weeks, layering thin washes over the surface and blending the edges until my hand ached, but every time I thought I had it, I'd step back and see it was still wrong.
The blue at the center was too pale, or the blue at the edges was too dark, or the whole thing looked flat and lifeless and nothing like what I'd seen in my head.
I picked up my brush.
It felt awkward in my hand at first, the way it always did after a few days away, but the awkwardness faded as I mixed the paint and started working.
I didn't think about Graham or the gallery or Petra or the way she'd dismissed me yesterday like I was nobody.
I didn't think about Beatrice or home or Mara's ordinary happy life that looked nothing like mine. I just painted.
The world outside the room disappeared, and for a little while, I wasn't Graham's wife or Beatrice's disappointment or the woman who chose the flowers while someone else got the credit.
I was just the painter I'd been before I put the brush down eleven years ago, before I married him, before I convinced myself that being his decorator was the price I had to pay for being married to the man building the biggest gallery in New York.
I added a thin wash of cerulean to the center, then blended it outward toward the edges. The paint moved smoothly under the brush, and I watched the blue soften and shift, spreading like water across the canvas. It was starting to look better. Not perfect, but better.
I worked until the light started to fade and my hand cramped, and then I stepped back to look at what I'd done.
It still wasn't right, but it was closer. Maybe next time I'd figure it out. Maybe I wouldn't. Either way, I'd keep coming back to this room, to these canvases nobody would ever see, and I'd keep painting because it was the only thing I had that was still mine.
I set the brush down and locked the door behind me.