16. Elise
ELISE
The walk to the house took longer than it should have.
I kept stopping at corners, pretending to look at storefronts I wasn't seeing.
My hands were shaking inside my coat pockets, and the October wind cut through the wool like it wasn't there.
Eleven days at Mara's had given me enough distance to know I needed to ask, and enough terror to know I didn't want the answer.
But I was out of choices. I couldn't stay in her guest room forever, couldn't keep lying to myself that not knowing was better than knowing. Petra's words had been rattling around in my head for days, and they wouldn't stop until I looked Graham in the face and asked him.
The house looked the same. Of course it did.
Nothing had burned down. The door was still blue, the same shade I'd picked out five years ago because it reminded me of the shutters at my grandmother's house in the country.
The steps still needed sweeping — there were leaves piled against the railing, brown and curled and forgotten.
I climbed them anyway.
My finger hovered over the bell. God, this was ridiculous. It was my house. I'd lived here for years. I'd chosen the paint and the door hardware and the planters that flanked the entrance. I had a key.
Except I didn't. The key was on the ring I'd left on his desk the night I walked out, and standing here on my own front step like a visitor made my chest tight with something I couldn't name.
I pressed the bell.
Footsteps inside, quick and heavy. My heart kicked against my ribs hard enough to hurt, and I curled my hands into fists to keep them from shaking. The lock turned. The door swung open.
Graham filled the doorway.
He stood too close because the threshold was narrow and he'd opened the door all the way, and for a second I couldn't breathe.
He was in an old sweater I recognized, the dark gray one with the hole in the cuff he refused to throw out, and his hair was a mess like he'd been running his hands through it.
He looked surprised. He looked relieved.
He looked like he'd been sleeping badly, which made two of us.
"Elise."
My name in his mouth did something I didn't want it to do. My stomach flipped, and I hated myself for it. I stepped back to put air between us, nearly stumbling on the step behind me.
"Can I come in?"
"Of course." He moved aside immediately, pressing himself against the doorframe to give me room. "Of course. Please."
I walked past him into the entryway, careful not to brush against him, and the house hit me all at once.
It smelled like coffee and the faint lemon oil he used on the banisters every Sunday.
It smelled like the lavender soap I kept in the powder room and the wood smoke that meant he'd been using the fireplace in the study.
It smelled like home, which was unbearable.
I didn't take my coat off. I stayed standing in the hall, my arms wrapped around myself, while he closed the door behind me. When he turned back, I could see him trying to read my face, trying to figure out what this was. A visit. A conversation. The beginning of something or the end.
"I wasn't expecting you," he said carefully.
"I know."
He waited. I waited. The silence stretched out thin and tight between us like a wire about to snap, and I could feel my pulse hammering in my throat.
"Do you want to sit down?" he asked. His voice was so gentle it made me want to scream. "I can make tea. Or coffee. I just made a pot."
"No." It came out sharper than I meant it to. I steadied my voice, forced it level. "I need to ask you something."
"All right."
He said it like he meant it. Like he was ready. Like he thought he could handle whatever I was about to throw at him. He had no idea what was coming, and some small cruel part of me was glad.
I made myself look at him. Really look at him. At his face, which I knew better than my own. At the line of his jaw and the faint shadow under his eyes and the way his hand rested on the newel post like he needed something to hold on to.
Don't lose your nerve. Just ask him. Ask and get it over with.
"The late calls," I said. My voice didn't sound like mine. "The ones Petra made to you. Did they happen?"
His expression didn't change, but something in his posture shifted. A small adjustment, shoulders back, weight settling. Like he was bracing for a blow he couldn't see yet.
"Yes," he said.
I waited for more. He didn't offer it. Typical. Graham never gave you more than you asked for directly, and sometimes not even that.
"And?" I pressed, digging my nails into my palms inside my pockets. "What were they about, Graham?"
"Gallery work," he said, like it was obvious. "She had questions about the acquisition timeline. About the installer we were using for her pieces. About scheduling the pre-show walk-through with the critics."
Gallery work. The words landed like stones.
"At eleven at night?" I heard myself ask. "She called you at eleven at night to talk about installers?"
"She keeps late hours," he said. His tone was patient, reasonable, the same voice he used with difficult artists who didn't understand contracts. "You know that, Elise. She's called the office after midnight before. It's just how she works."
My chest tightened until I thought my ribs might crack. He wasn't lying. I could tell when Graham lied — it was rare enough to be obvious, and his voice always went flat when he did it. Right now he sounded completely sincere.
He believed what he was saying. That was almost worse.
"The studio visits," I said. My voice sounded strange to my own ears, too level, like I was asking about the weather instead of tearing my marriage apart one question at a time. "The ones you made without me. Did you go to her studio?"
"Yes." No hesitation. Not even a pause.
"How many times?"
He frowned slightly, like he was trying to remember, like it hadn't mattered enough to keep count. "Three, maybe four. She wanted feedback on the installation plan, and we needed to see the work in her space to understand the lighting requirements. Some of the pieces are site-specific, so?—"
"You went without me," I interrupted.
"You weren't available," he said. Not defensive. Just factual. "And it was time-sensitive. The show's in six weeks, Elise. We couldn't wait."
We. I felt that word like a hand around my throat, squeezing.
"I wasn't available," I repeated slowly, forcing each word out past the tightness in my chest, "because you didn't ask me."
"I did." His frown deepened, a crease appearing between his eyebrows. "I mentioned it twice. You said you were busy."
Had he? God, maybe he had. Maybe I'd been so far underwater by then that I'd stopped hearing him, stopped paying attention to the gallery talk that filled every conversation we had.
Or maybe he'd mentioned it the way he mentioned everything that involved me and the gallery — in passing, in the margins, between other things that mattered more to him.
I couldn't remember. That was worse than anything. I couldn't remember, and that meant he might be telling the truth, and I might have been the one who'd let this happen.
No. That wasn't fair. I hadn't let anything happen. I'd been erased so slowly I hadn't noticed until there was nothing left.
"The embrace," I said.
His whole body went still. Not frozen, exactly, but utterly motionless in a way that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
"At the gallery," I continued, watching his face. "At the opening. Petra embraced you. Did that happen?"
The pause was longer this time. I watched him think, watched the calculation happening behind his eyes. He was trying to understand why I was asking. What I knew. What trap I was laying. Whether this was about jealousy or something else entirely.
"Yes," he said finally.
"Tell me about it."
"There's nothing to tell, Elise." He spread his hands, a gesture of openness that looked almost helpless. "She was excited about the turnout. The numbers were good — better than we'd projected. She threw her arms around me. It lasted maybe five seconds. Then she went to talk to the Times critic."
"And you let her."
"Elise, it was an embrace, not—" He stopped. Reconsidered. Started again. "Yes. I let her. It was a professional celebration. It didn't mean anything."
"Gallery work," I said flatly.
"What?"
"That's what it was." I could hear the edge in my voice now, the bitterness I couldn't quite bury no matter how hard I tried. "The calls, the visits, the embrace. All of it. Gallery work."
"Yes." He said it like it was simple. Like it was obvious. Like I was being unreasonable for even asking. "What else would it be?"
Something caught in my throat. He didn't know.
He really, truly didn't know what Petra had told me.
Didn't know that she'd stood in Mara's kitchen three days after his opening and explained, with perfect calm and a smile that never reached her eyes, that she and Graham had an understanding.
That I was the obstacle between them. That I'd always been the obstacle, but not for much longer.
He didn't know, and I wasn't going to tell him.
If I told him, he'd deny it. He'd be horrified and outraged on my behalf.
He'd call Petra immediately and demand an explanation, and she'd smile that smile and say I'd misunderstood, that I'd taken something innocent and twisted it, and Graham would believe her.
He always believed the version of events that let him keep building his gallery without friction or complication or mess.
He'd believe her because believing her was easier than believing he'd been blind.
Or worse — he wouldn't deny it. He'd go silent the way he always did when he didn't have an answer he thought I'd accept. He'd let the question hang in the air between us, unanswered and unanswerable, and I'd be left staring at that silence, knowing everything and nothing all at once.
I couldn't stand either option.
So I just looked at him. At his face, confused and concerned and utterly, completely unaware of what he'd done.
At his hand, still resting on the newel post, the knuckles white from gripping too hard.
At the ring on his left hand, the simple gold band that matched the one I'd left on his desk eleven days ago.
He took a step toward me.
I stepped back before I could think about it, my shoulders hitting the door behind me. The brass knob dug into my spine.
He stopped like I'd slapped him. His hand was halfway extended, reaching for me, and he let it fall to his side. "Elise," he said quietly. "What's going on? Talk to me. Please."
Talk to me. Like I hadn't been trying to talk to him for eleven years. Like I hadn't been screaming into the silence while he built his empire and forgot to hear me. Like talking had ever made a difference when he didn't want to listen.
"I want a divorce," I said.
The words came out calm. Flat. Like I was stating a fact instead of driving a knife into both of us and twisting it.
Graham's face went white. Actually white, the color draining so fast I thought he might pass out.
"What?"
"A divorce," I repeated. My hands were shaking again, so badly I had to clench them into fists to keep them still. "I want one. I'm asking for one."
"Elise, no." He moved toward me again, and I held up a hand to stop him. He froze mid-step. "No. We can — whatever this is, whatever you think I did, we can fix it. Just tell me. Tell me what I did wrong. Tell me what you need."
"I need you to let me go," I said.
"I won't." His voice cracked on the words, raw and desperate in a way I'd never heard from him. "Elise, I love you. I've always loved you. Whatever you think happened with Petra?—"
"Don't," I said sharply, the word coming out like a whip crack. "Don't say her name. Don't explain it. I don't want to hear it."
He stared at me. I watched him try to find the words, the argument, the perfect logical explanation that would undo this and put us back together. Watched him search for it and come up empty.
Watched him fail.
"Please," he said finally. It came out barely above a whisper, and it broke something in me I didn't know was still whole. "Don't do this."
I reached behind me for the doorknob, fumbling. My hand found it on the second try, and I turned it, feeling the latch give.
"I'll have a lawyer contact you," I said.
"Elise—"
I opened the door and stepped through it before he could finish, before he could say whatever he was about to say that might make me stay.
The cold air hit my face like a slap, sharp and clean and real.
I pulled the door shut behind me, cutting off the sound of him saying my name, and walked down the steps.
I didn't let myself look back. Didn't let myself stop. One foot in front of the other, down the steps and along the sidewalk, my heels clicking against the pavement in a rhythm that sounded like done, done, done.
My legs carried me to the corner before they started shaking too hard to trust. I stopped, gripping a lamppost with both hands, trying to remember how to breathe around the thing lodged in my chest.
Behind me, the house sat quiet. The blue door stayed closed.
He didn't follow me out.