10. Hugo
— ? —
Hugo
My parents’ living room has never felt smaller than it does right now.
I’m standing in the center of it, still wearing the clothes I put on three hours ago, the first clean outfit I’ve managed in days, while my father sits in his leather armchair with an expression of studied disappointment and my mother perches on the edge of the sofa, her eyes bright with a look I can’t quite read.
The divorce papers are on the coffee table between us.
Unsigned.
“Let me make sure I understand,” my father says, his voice carrying the particular chill it gets when he’s convinced someone is being foolish.
“Your wife has filed for divorce. She’s asked for nothing, no settlement, no assets, no ongoing connection to this family whatsoever.
And your response is to refuse to sign.”
“That’s correct.”
“On what grounds?”
“On the grounds that I’m going to win her back.”
The silence that follows is deafening.
My father’s laugh, when it comes, is short and humorless.
“Win her back,” he repeats. “As if marriage is a game you can simply choose to replay when you don’t like the outcome.”
“It’s not a game. That’s exactly the point.”
“The point is that you’ve already lost.” He leans forward, his elbows on his knees.
“Lucille made her position clear. She wants nothing from you. Nothing, Hugo. Do you understand what that means? It means she’s not angry, angry people want things.
She’s simply done. And all the grand gestures in the world won’t fix that. ”
“Some things can’t be fixed with a grand gesture,” I agree. “That’s not what I’m planning.”
“Then what exactly are you planning?”
I look at my mother. She’s been silent since I arrived, watching the exchange with an expression I’ve come to recognize over the years, the particular stillness she adopts when she’s waiting for my father to talk himself into a corner.
“I’m planning to show up,” I say. “Every day. In every way I should have been showing up for the past two years. Not with gestures, with consistency. With presence. With actually being the husband I should have been from the beginning.”
“And if she still doesn’t want you?”
“Then at least I’ll know I tried. At least I’ll know I did everything in my power to deserve her, even if she never takes me back.”
My father shakes his head. “Sentimentality. This is what comes from marrying for…”
“Wilfred.” My mother’s voice cuts through the room like a blade. “That’s enough.”
He falls silent immediately. Forty years of marriage have taught him when to retreat.
Florence rises from the sofa and crosses to where I’m standing, her eyes searching my face.
“What’s your plan?” she asks quietly.
“I don’t have all the details yet. But I know where to start.” I take a breath. “I need to find out where she’s staying. What she’s doing. I need to understand what her life looks like now, so I can figure out how to be part of it without ambushing her.”
“She’s staying with Alice,” my mother says. “I spoke to her yesterday.”
“You spoke to Lucille?”
“I spoke to Alice. Lucille isn’t returning my calls either, but Alice was willing to give me the basics.
” Florence’s hand comes up to rest on my arm.
“She’s building her own label, Hugo. Did you know that?
She’s been working toward it for months, apparently, planning and saving and developing designs that don’t have anything to do with being your wife.
She rented a studio downtown. She’s starting over. ”
A knot twists in my chest.
“Good,” I say, and I mean it. “She deserves that.”
“She deserves a lot of things you didn’t give her.”
“I know.”
My mother studies me for a long moment, and whatever she sees makes her nod slowly.
“Then go,” she says. “Start showing up. But do it carefully, Hugo. Don’t push. Don’t overwhelm. Let her see that you’ve changed through your actions, not your words.” She pauses. “And for God’s sake, do the beard. You look like a castaway.”
Despite everything, I almost smile.
“Yes, ma’am.”
***
Alice’s apartment is on the third floor of a converted brownstone in Silver Lake.
I’ve been here exactly once, a dinner party two years ago, shortly after Lucille and I were married.
I remember Alice watching me across the table with barely concealed suspicion, her eyes tracking every interaction between me and her best friend like she was cataloging evidence for a future prosecution.
She was right to be suspicious, as it turns out. She saw what I refused to see.
I knock on the door and wait.
Footsteps approach, then stop. A long pause. She’s probably checking the peephole, recognizing me, deciding whether to pretend she’s not home.
The door opens six inches, chain still engaged.
“No,” Alice says through the gap.
“I just want to talk.”
“You had two years to talk to her. You spent them talking to everyone else.”
“I know.”
“She’s not here, if that’s what you’re wondering. She’s at her studio. Working. Building a life that doesn’t have your name attached to it.”
“I’m not here to see Lucille. I’m here to see you.”
That surprises her. I can see it in the slight widening of her eyes, the momentary hesitation before her expression hardens again.
“Why would you want to see me?”
“Because you know her better than anyone. Because you’ve watched me fail her for two years and you never said a word, not because you approved but because you trusted her to make her own choices. And because I need to understand what I’m up against if I’m going to have any chance of fixing this.”
Alice stares at me through the gap in the door.
“She’s too good for you,” she says finally.
“I know.” I hold her gaze. “That’s why I have to try.”
The silence lingers between us. Behind her, I can see a sliver of her apartment, colorful, cluttered, full of life in a way my house never was. This is where Lucille has been staying. This is where she’s been rebuilding herself while I fell apart in an empty mansion.
“She’s not going to forgive you,” Alice says.
“Maybe not.”
“She’s spent two years making herself small for you. Shrinking herself to fit into the spaces you left. Do you have any idea what that does to a person?”
“I’m starting to.”
“Are you? Because from where I’m standing, it looks like you’re still the same man who thought showing up occasionally was enough.
Who thought love was a thing you could put on a schedule.
” Her voice turns pointed. “She used to wait up for you, did you know that? Every night you were gone, she’d stay up until two, three in the morning, just in case you came home early.
Just in case you wanted to talk. And you never did. ”
The words hit like physical blows.
“I didn’t know.”
“You didn’t want to know. That’s the problem.” Alice’s grip on the door tightens. “She loved you so much, Hugo. More than you deserved. More than any of us thought was wise. And you treated her like an obligation. Like a box you’d already checked.”
“I know. I know all of that now. And I’m going to spend the rest of my life trying to make up for it, whether she takes me back or not.”
Alice searches my face, looking for a crack, sincerity, maybe, or proof that this is just another performance. I let her look. I have nothing to hide anymore.
“She rented a studio,” Alice says finally, her voice softening by a fraction. “On Spring Street downtown. She’s been working eighteen-hour days, building her portfolio, reaching out to boutiques. She’s calling it Adler Design, her maiden name.”
Not Kensington. Not anything connected to me.
“Good,” I say, and I mean it even though it hurts. “She should have a space that’s hers.”
“She should have had a husband who made her feel like she was enough.” Alice starts to close the door, then pauses.
“If you hurt her again, if you make promises you can’t keep or show up just long enough to give her hope and then disappear, I will end you.
And I don’t mean professionally. I mean I will make your life a living hell in ways you can’t even imagine. ”
“Understood.”
“Good.” The door closes. Then, muffled through the wood: “The studio is on the fourth floor. She usually arrives around seven.”
I stand in the hallway for a long moment, letting her words settle.
Then I go to find a florist.
***
The flower stall on Spring Street has seen better days, a weathered cart with buckets of blooms arranged by color, run by an elderly woman who looks like she’s been selling flowers since before I was born.
I remember this place. I remember walking past it with Lucille eight months ago, on our way to some industry event I’ve long since forgotten. I remember the way she stopped, her hand drifting toward a bucket of small white flowers, her expression going soft and distant.
“Lily of the valley,” she’d said when I asked. “My mother used to grow them in our garden. She said they meant return to happiness.”
I’d nodded without really listening, my mind already on the event ahead, the people I needed to impress, the performance I needed to deliver.
Now I’m standing at the same cart, buying a single stem of those same flowers, and the weight of everything I missed presses down on my chest like a physical thing.
“Just one?” the woman asks, her voice raspy.
“Just one. For now.”
She wraps it in brown paper without comment and hands it over. I pay her twice what she asks and walk the two blocks to Lucille’s studio.
The building is old but well-maintained, the kind of industrial space that’s been converted into creative offices. I find the entrance and check the directory, Adler Design, Suite 405, and then I stand outside like an idiot, holding a single flower, trying to figure out what the hell I’m doing.
I could go up. I could knock on her door and say all the things I’ve been rehearsing in my head. I could beg and plead and promise to change.
But that’s what the old Hugo would do. Grand gestures. Big moments. The kind of dramatic display that feels meaningful in the moment but evaporates into nothing when real life resumes.
That’s not what she needs. That’s not what I’m going to give her.