14. Elise
ELISE
The doorbell rang while I was staring at the painting on Mara's wall, the one with the sailboat nobody ever sailed. I'd looked at it for three days and I still didn't know what color the water was supposed to be. Blue, maybe. Or gray. Or something in between that didn't have a name.
Mara's footsteps crossed the hall. The door opened and someone spoke, but I couldn't make out the words through the closed living room door. A man's voice, low and careful. My stomach clenched. I turned my head enough to see the doorway, my pulse already picking up speed before I knew why.
Simon stood in the hall. His coat was dark with rain and his hair was wet at the edges. His expression was careful, like he'd rehearsed what he was going to say on the way over and was trying to remember it. The sight of him made my throat go tight.
Mara glanced back at me, her hand still on the doorknob. I met her eyes and nodded once. She looked at Simon again. "Come in," she said, stepping back to let him through.
Simon came in and pulled the door shut behind him. Water dripped off his coat onto Mara's floor. He didn't take the coat off, didn't move past the little square of tile in the entryway. His hands went into his pockets and he stood there like he wasn't sure he should have come at all.
"I'll be upstairs," Mara said. She gave me one of those looks that meant call if you need me, and I nodded again because I didn't trust my voice yet. She disappeared up the stairs, and then it was just me and Simon in the quiet apartment with the rain tapping against the windows.
The silence stretched between us. Simon stood near the door with his shoulders hunched slightly forward, his hands still in his coat pockets.
I sat on the couch with my knees pulled up and my arms wrapped around them because I didn't know what else to do with myself.
The apartment suddenly felt smaller than it was, like the walls had moved in while I wasn't paying attention. God, this was awkward.
Simon cleared his throat. "I wanted to say I'm sorry."
"For what?" My voice came out sharper than I meant it to. I sounded defensive and small and I hated it.
"For the dinner." He pulled his hands out of his pockets, looked at them like he didn't know what to do with them either, and then put them back. "Graham's birthday. The whole thing was a disaster and I just sat there like an idiot."
I remembered the apologetic look he'd given me across the table at the house, the one that didn't say anything out loud and didn't do anything to help. Just a look. Sympathetic and useless. "You looked sorry."
"I should have said something."
"Yeah." I tightened my arms around my knees. "You should have."
Simon winced. He deserved that and he knew it. "I know. I'm sorry."
"Okay."
He stood there for another long moment, and then he crossed the room and sat down in the chair across from me.
He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped between them.
Up close I could see how tired he looked.
There were shadows under his eyes and a tightness around his mouth I hadn't noticed before.
He looked like he hadn't been sleeping well either.
"Graham told me what happened," he said. "That you left."
"Did he?" I tried to keep my voice even, but it wobbled anyway. "What did he say?"
"That you walked out. That you haven't been home since." Simon hesitated. "He said he didn't know why."
I laughed, and it came out bitter and harsh.
Of course Graham didn't know. He never knew.
He could stand in the middle of a burning room and wonder why it was getting warm.
I tucked my hair behind my ear with shaking fingers and tried to get a grip on myself.
Don't cry. Don't you dare cry in front of Simon.
"Did he seem upset?" I asked, and immediately felt like an idiot for asking.
Simon looked at me carefully. "Yeah. He seemed upset."
"But not upset enough to come here himself."
"Elise—"
"It's fine." I cut him off before he could make excuses for his brother. "I don't want to talk about that."
Simon nodded slowly. He didn't push. That was one thing I'd always liked about Simon—he knew when to let something go. Graham could stand to learn that particular skill, but he never would. Eleven years of marriage had taught me that much.
"Petra told me something," I said. The words felt like glass in my throat. "She came to the house. A week before Graham gave his speech at the gallery and thanked her and forgot I existed."
Simon's expression shifted. The carefulness came back, mixed with something else I couldn't quite name. "Told you what?"
I took a breath. My heart was pounding so hard I could feel it in my fingertips. "That she's been keeping him late at the gallery. All those calls after hours."
Simon's jaw tightened, but he didn't say anything. He just waited.
"She said he's been walking her through every piece in his studio," I continued. My voice was shaking now and I couldn't stop it. "Taking her there. Without me."
"Elise—"
"And she told me she reached for him." The words came out in a rush, like saying them fast would make them hurt less. It didn't work. "The other afternoon at the gallery. She said she reached for him and he didn't pull away."
The silence that followed was worse than anything Simon could have said.
He sat there with his hands still clasped between his knees, staring at me like he was trying to figure out whether I was serious or just hurt and lashing out.
I was both. I was serious and I was hurt and I was so tired I felt like I was coming apart at the seams.
"I don't know if that's true," Simon said finally. His voice was quiet, careful. The same voice you'd use with someone standing on a ledge.
"That's what I want to know." My throat was so tight I could barely get the words out. "Is it true? Have you seen them together? Has Graham said anything to you about her?"
Simon shook his head. "I haven't seen anything. But I'm at the auction house most days, not the gallery. I don't know what happens there when I'm not around."
"So you don't know."
"No," he said. "I don't know."
I wanted him to say something else. I wanted him to tell me Petra was lying, that she was a jealous schemer making things up to hurt me.
I wanted him to tell me Graham would never do that, that I was an idiot for even believing it for a second.
But Simon just sat there with his elbows on his knees and his face carefully blank, and he didn't tell me any of those things.
"I need to know," I said. My voice broke and I pressed my lips together hard to stop them from trembling. "I need to know if any of it is true. The calls after hours. The studio visits. The embrace. I need to know."
Simon nodded slowly. "I'll find out."
"How?"
"I'll ask him." He said it like it was simple. Like asking Graham a direct question would get me a direct answer. Maybe it would, coming from Simon. Maybe Graham would actually tell his brother the truth.
"He'll just lie," I said.
"Maybe." Simon leaned back in the chair. "But I'll know if he does."
I didn't know whether that was true, but I wanted to believe it.
Simon had always been better at reading people than Graham was.
Better at seeing what was right in front of him instead of what he wanted to see.
I pulled my knees tighter against my chest and realized my whole body was shaking.
Not just my hands. All of me. God, I was such a mess.
"Do you want me to tell him anything?" Simon asked. His voice was gentle now, like he could see how close I was to falling apart completely. "From you?"
I shook my head hard. "No."
"Elise—"
"I don't want you carrying messages between us like we're children who can't talk to each other.
" I knew I sounded harsh, but the idea of it made my skin crawl.
Graham and I communicating through Simon like we were in grade school and couldn't be in the same room.
"Just find out if it's true. That's all I'm asking. "
Simon looked at me for a long moment. His eyes were gray, softer somehow. Kinder. "Okay," he said finally. "I'll find out and I'll tell you. That's it."
"Thank you."
He stood up then, his hand moving to the doorknob. He looked at me for a long moment, like he wanted to say something else, but then he just nodded once and pulled the door open. The sound of the rain got louder.
The door closed behind him and I sat there on Mara's couch with my knees pulled up and my whole body still shaking with something I couldn't name. Nerves. Fear. Anger. All of it at once, vibrating under my skin like a live wire.
I didn't know what Simon would find out.
I didn't know whether it would matter if the answer was no but everything else was yes.
Calls after hours keeping him late. Studio visits without me.
Letting her reach for him and not pulling away.
Thanking her in his speech at the gallery while I sat there like a piece of furniture he'd forgotten to move.
The sailboat on the wall was still the wrong color. I still didn't know what it was supposed to be. Maybe it wasn't supposed to be anything. Maybe it was just paint on canvas, shapes that looked like a boat and water but didn't mean what you thought they meant.
Upstairs, Mara's footsteps creaked across the floor.
She was waiting for me to call her down, to tell her what Simon had said, to cry on her shoulder and let her tell me everything would be okay.
But I didn't call her. I just sat there and stared at the painting until my eyes started to blur and I had to blink hard to clear them.
Simon said he'd find out. That was all I had.
It wasn't enough and it was too much and I didn't know what I was supposed to do with it.
I didn't know what I'd do if he came back and told me it was all true, that Graham had been lying to me for months.
I didn't know what I'd do if he said it wasn't true, that Petra had made it all up.
Either way I was stuck in this apartment with Mara's terrible sailboat painting, waiting for someone else to tell me what was real.
I pulled the blanket off the back of the couch and wrapped it around my shoulders.
My hands were freezing. The whole apartment was warm—Mara kept it too warm, actually, hot enough that I'd been sleeping with the window cracked—but I felt cold all the way through.
Like I'd been standing outside in the rain instead of sitting on her couch.
The worst part was that I'd asked Simon to find out, and now I had to wait.
I hated waiting. I hated not knowing. I hated that Graham had put me in a position where I had to ask his brother to investigate him because I couldn't trust my own husband to tell me the truth.
What kind of marriage was that? What kind of marriage had I been living in for eleven years?
I wondered if Graham even knew Simon had come here. Probably not. Simon wouldn't have told him he was coming. He'd have just shown up at Mara's door because that's what Simon did when something was wrong. He showed up and he tried to help, quietly, without making a production out of it.
But this wasn't something he could help with.
This wasn't a problem he could fix by asking the right questions or making the right calls.
This was my marriage falling apart in slow motion, and all Simon could do was tell me whether the other woman was lying or not.
That was it. That was all anyone could do.
God, what was happening to me?
I'd left my ring on the front desk at the gallery five days ago.
He'd come once, and I'd told him goodbye at Mara's door.
Since then—no calls. No second visit. Nothing but silence, the same silence he'd given me for eleven years every time I needed him to speak up and say something that mattered.
Maybe that was my answer. Maybe the silence was the only answer I was ever going to get from him.
Maybe I'd been waiting eleven years for Graham to see me, and he never would.
The thought made my chest ache. I pulled the blanket tighter and tucked my chin down against my knees.
Mara's footsteps creaked again, closer to the stairs this time.
In a minute she'd come down and ask me if I was okay, and I'd have to decide whether to tell her the truth or lie and say I was fine.
I wasn't ready for that conversation yet.
I wasn't ready to say any of it out loud to someone who'd hug me and tell me I deserved better, because I already knew that.
Knowing it didn't change anything. Knowing it didn't make Graham suddenly become the husband I needed him to be.
The sailboat sat on the wall, stuck forever in water that wasn't any color at all.
Just gray or blue or something in between, shapes on canvas that looked like they meant something but probably didn't. I stared at it until the light outside started to fade and the colors all bled together into nothing.
Simon would find out, and then I'd know. And then I'd have to figure out what to do with that knowledge, whatever it was. One more thing I had to do alone, because Graham wasn't here and hadn't come and probably wouldn't come even if I asked him to.
I closed my eyes. The rain kept falling.