5. Elise
ELISE
Graham's voice woke me at eleven-thirty.
I lay still in the dark, listening to him murmur downstairs.
The words were indistinct through the floor but the rhythm was familiar — that low, careful tone he used when he was talking a difficult artist through their doubts.
I'd heard it a hundred times at dinners, at studio visits, through his office door.
Now he was using it at eleven-thirty at night in our house while I was upstairs in bed.
I told myself it was nothing. Gallery work. Some artist having a crisis about their upcoming show. Graham had always taken those calls, always made himself available. That was how he'd built the biggest gallery in New York.
I tried to fall back asleep but my mind kept circling. Why was he taking gallery calls at home instead of at the gallery? Why here, in the one place we were supposed to just be us?
Or maybe that was the problem. Maybe there wasn't an us anymore, just a Graham and an Elise who happened to share an address.
God, I was being ridiculous.
I shook off the thought, took my keys, and went to my studio — the room nobody knew about, on the third floor of the empty brownstone, the one place that was entirely mine.
My canvases waited for me there, half-finished pieces I'd been working on in secret for years.
Painting was the one thing I hadn't given up when I married him, even if I'd given up showing it.
Even if nobody but me ever saw what I made anymore.
I lost myself in color for hours, mixing cadmium yellow with a touch of ochre until I got the light exactly right. When I finally got home the morning sun was streaming through the kitchen windows. Graham was gone. A note on the counter said he'd gone to visit a studio, that he'd be back later.
He didn't say which studio. He didn't ask if I wanted to come.
That stung more than it should have. For eleven years I'd been the one who went to studios with him, the one who talked the difficult artists into signing, who saw what a piece needed before the artist knew it themselves.
I was his eye. I'd always been his eye. Now he was going without me and I didn't even know who he was seeing.
I tried to ignore the tight feeling in my chest. Tried to tell myself it was just work, just Graham being Graham, the man who'd built an empire by never sleeping and always being available. But my hands shook a little as I crumpled the note and threw it away.
I couldn't stay in the house.
I didn't plan it. I told myself I was going out to buy flowers for the dining room, something to make the house feel less empty.
But I found myself walking, then taking a cab, then standing outside the gallery with no good reason for being there except that Graham was inside and I wanted to see him.
Wanted to prove to myself that everything was fine, that the late call and the solo visit were just gallery business and I was inventing problems where none existed.
The gallery door was unlocked. Of course it was — we were open, we had three shows running, there was no reason for the door to be locked at two in the afternoon. I pushed through into the cool white space, my heels clicking on the polished concrete floor.
The gallery assistant glanced up from the front desk. "Oh — Elise. I didn't know you were coming in today."
"Just stopping by," I said, too brightly. My throat felt tight. "Is Graham here?"
"In the back office." She smiled. "Go on through."
I walked through the main gallery space, past the Lindqvist paintings I'd chosen, past the sculpture I'd talked the artist into letting us show when she'd been ready to pull the whole exhibition. My work. All of it my work, and nobody who walked through these doors would ever know it.
I pushed the thought aside. I wasn't here to nurse old resentments. I was here to see my husband, to remind myself that we were fine, that I was being ridiculous about the call and the visit and the distance I'd felt growing between us ever since the birthday dinner.
The door to Graham's office was half-open.
I heard his laugh before I saw him — that warm, genuine sound he saved for artists he really liked, the ones he believed in.
My chest loosened a little. See? Everything was fine.
He was just working, just being Graham, and I'd been spinning myself into knots over nothing.
Then I stepped into the doorway and saw Petra.
She was leaning against Graham's desk, elegant in a cream silk blouse and tailored trousers, her dark hair swept back in that effortless way that probably took her stylist an hour. She was laughing at something Graham had said, her hand resting lightly on his arm.
Graham stood close enough that I could see the warmth in his expression, the easy comfort in his posture. He looked relaxed in a way I hadn't seen him look in months. Happy.
Petra saw me first. Her eyes flicked to mine for just a second — long enough for me to see the flash of satisfaction there — and then she turned back to Graham and closed the distance between them.
Her arms went around him in an embrace that looked friendly, affectionate, entirely innocent to anyone who hadn't seen the calculation in her eyes a second before.
Graham hugged her back, still smiling, completely oblivious.
My stomach dropped. The floor seemed to tilt under me, and I grabbed the doorframe to steady myself, my wedding ring catching the light.
That stupid ring. The one I'd worn for eleven years while I convinced myself being Graham's decorator was just the cost of being married to the man building the biggest gallery in New York.
I needed it to be innocent. God, I needed it to be innocent.
Petra was an investor, she was allowed to be here.
She was allowed to hug Graham, allowed to laugh with him, allowed to lean against his desk like she belonged there.
There was nothing wrong with any of it except the look I'd seen in her eyes before she'd embraced him, the one that said she'd known exactly what she was doing when she saw me in the doorway.
But I couldn't prove that. Couldn't say it out loud without sounding jealous and paranoid and small.
So I didn't.
Graham looked up and saw me, his expression shifting to surprise. "Elise — I didn't know you were coming by."
Petra stepped back from him, smoothing her blouse. Her smile was warm and friendly and absolutely perfect. "Elise, how lovely. I was just telling Graham about the Parsons piece I saw last week. You'd love it — all those layered transparencies you're always drawn to."
She knew what I liked. Of course she did. She'd been studying me for months, learning how to be me, figuring out how to slide into the space I'd carved out beside Graham until there was no room left for me at all.
"Sounds beautiful," I heard myself say. My voice came out steady, pleasant, utterly unremarkable. "I'd love to hear more about it."
Liar. I didn't want to hear anything. I wanted to ask what she was doing in Graham's office, why she'd embraced him the second she saw me, whether all those late calls had been her voice on the other end of the line while I lay awake upstairs.
I wanted to ask Graham why he looked so happy to see her when I couldn't remember the last time he'd looked that relaxed with me.
But asking would mean admitting I'd seen something wrong in that embrace.
Admitting I was bothered by her hand on his arm, by the warmth in his laugh, by the easy intimacy of her leaning against his desk like she had every right to be there.
And if I admitted that, I'd sound exactly like what Beatrice already thought I was — a gold digger who'd married Graham for his name and his money and was now threatened by a woman who actually belonged in his world.
So I smiled. I kept my voice light. I pretended my heart wasn't hammering against my ribs and my hands weren't shaking and I hadn't just watched another woman embrace my husband with a look in her eyes that said she'd won something.
"I can send you the gallery details," Petra said. She picked up her bag from Graham's desk, taking her time, completely comfortable in his space. "We should go together. Make a day of it."
"That would be nice," I lied.
Graham was watching me with a slight furrow between his brows, like he was trying to figure out why I was there. Not pleased to see me. Not annoyed either. Just...confused. Like my presence in his gallery needed explanation.
"I was nearby," I said, answering the unspoken question. "Thought I'd stop in."
"I'm glad you did." He smiled, but it didn't quite reach his eyes. There was something distracted in his expression, something already pulling his attention back to whatever he and Petra had been discussing before I interrupted.
Before I interrupted. In my own husband's gallery. In the space we'd built together.
Ugh. My throat burned and I swallowed hard against it, willing myself not to flush, not to show anything.
I'd gotten so good at not showing anything over the years.
At standing in rooms where collectors talked about my eye like it was Graham's, where Beatrice spoke contempt in words that passed as manners, where Petra introduced me as the woman who chose the flowers.
I'd learned to keep my face pleasant and my voice steady and my feelings locked down so tight that nobody could see them bleeding.
I could do it now.
"I should let you get back to work," I said. My smile felt like it might crack my face. "I'll see you at home."
"Dinner at seven?" Graham asked.
"Sure."
I turned and walked out before either of them could say anything else, my heels clicking across the concrete in a rhythm that sounded too fast, too urgent, like I was running. I wasn't running. I was just leaving, just going home, just giving them space to finish whatever meeting I'd walked in on.
Except it hadn't looked like a meeting. It had looked like Petra claiming territory, and Graham not even noticing.
The September sun hit me when I stepped outside, warm and bright and completely at odds with the cold knot in my chest. I stood on the sidewalk for a moment, letting the heat soak into my skin, trying to convince myself I'd imagined the calculation in Petra's eyes.
Trying to believe Graham would have pulled away if he'd known what she was doing.
Trying to hold onto the marriage I'd convinced myself we still had.
But I couldn't ask him about it. Couldn't go home and say I saw the way she looked at me before she touched you. Couldn't admit I'd been bothered by something so small, so easily explained away. Petra was an investor. She was allowed to be there. And Graham?—
Graham hadn't even known I'd seen it.