4. Lena
LENA
The dining room was halfway through the evening rush when I walked in.
I moved on instinct, reaching for the reservation list even though I'd been gone all of ten minutes.
A couple waited by the door, hands linked, looking at the old photographs on the walls.
The woman leaned into the man's shoulder and he said something that made her laugh.
I smiled at them and pulled two menus from the shelf.
"Right this way."
I led them to a table by the window, the one that caught the streetlight through the glass.
The man pulled out the woman's chair and she laughed, swatting at his hand.
I set the menus down and filled their water glasses from the pitcher I kept on the sideboard.
The motions were automatic. I'd done this a thousand times.
"Your server will be with you in just a minute," I said.
They didn't look up. They were already leaning toward each other, talking about something I couldn't hear. The woman reached out and touched the man's hand, her fingers curling around his, and he grinned at her like she'd just said the best thing he'd ever heard.
I turned away before the ache in my chest could settle.
Another couple came through the door and I seated them near the back. A family of four arrived after that, the kids bouncing on their toes. I grabbed the high chair from the storage closet and set it up at their table, smiling at the toddler who immediately started banging her hands on the tray.
This was my world. The rhythm of it, the noise, the way every table had its own small story. I knew how to do this. I was good at it.
I just wasn't sure I knew how to do anything else anymore.
The kitchen door swung open and Maggie came through it, still moving with the quick efficiency of someone mid-service.
She had a towel slung over her shoulder and she was wiping her hands on it as she walked, her attention already shifting from whatever she'd left on the line.
Flour dusted her sleeve and there was a smudge of something dark — probably balsamic — across her cheekbone.
Her hair was tied back in the same messy knot she'd worn since we were kids, strands escaping around her face.
She was halfway across the dining room before she looked up and saw me standing there. She stopped. The towel stilled in her hands and her whole posture changed, the work falling away as she took me in. I watched her register something in my face, something I hadn't meant to show.
"You're back."
"I'm back."
She didn't move. Just stood there, the towel still in her hands, her eyes on me in that way she had of seeing straight through to the bone. I knew that look. I'd grown up with it. Maggie could read me like one of her recipe cards, and I wasn't sure I wanted to be read right now.
"What?" I said.
"You tell me."
I turned to straighten the menus on the host stand, lining them up so the edges were even.
My hands were shaking. Just a little, but enough that I had to press my palms flat against the wood to steady them.
The gold band on my finger felt heavy, and I realized I was working it back and forth over my knuckle, pressing it down and pulling it halfway up again until my finger started to ache.
"Lena."
Maggie's voice was quiet. She'd moved closer, close enough that I could smell the rosemary and garlic that clung to her from the line. She put one hand on my shoulder and I felt something inside me crack.
"I don't know what to do," I said.
The words came out too fast, too rough. I didn't mean to say them. I didn't mean to sound like that — small and lost and desperate — but once I started I couldn't stop.
"There's something wrong. With me and Theo, I mean.
There's this — this space between us that keeps getting wider, and I don't know how it happened or when it started or how to fix it.
" I looked down at my hands. At the ring I was still turning.
"I used to know what he was thinking. I used to be able to finish his sentences.
We'd work the line together and I'd hand him the garnish before he even asked for it.
Now I can barely get him to look at me long enough to say goodnight. "
Maggie's hand tightened on my shoulder.
"How long has this been going on?"
"I don't know. Months, maybe. A year. It's like watching something slip away and not being able to catch it.
" My throat went tight and I swallowed hard.
"I tried making his favorite meals. Osso buco, the way he likes it.
I tried waiting up for him. I tried talking to him about the restaurant, about the show, about the Seattle expansion and the Denver launch, and he just — he's always half somewhere else.
Looking at his phone or thinking about some meeting or planning the next segment. "
"And Bianca?"
I flinched. God. Just hearing her name was like a slap.
"She's always there. At the house, at his office, on the phone with him when he finally comes home at midnight.
" I dragged in a breath. "She has more of his time than I do, Maggie.
More of his attention. I'm his wife. I'm supposed to be the one he turns to.
But I'm not. I'm just — I'm the woman who sets the table and waits for him to show up, and he never does. "
Maggie was quiet for a long moment. When she spoke her voice was careful, like she was testing the weight of each word before she let it go.
"What do you want me to say?"
The question sat between us. I opened my mouth and nothing came out.
God, I didn't even know how to ask for this.
I'd spent twelve years being the wife who had it all figured out, the one who ran her own dining room and kept her own life and never needed anyone to tell her what to do.
Asking felt like admitting I'd been wrong about all of it.
But I was so tired of carrying it alone.
"I want you to tell me what to do," I said finally. The words came out rough, like I was dragging them up from somewhere deep. "I want you to tell me how to fix this, how to make him see me again." My voice cracked. "Please, Maggie. I don't know what else to try."
"I can't do that."
"Maggie—"
"No." She let go of my shoulder and stepped back, crossing her arms. Her face was set in that stubborn expression I knew too well. "You came here because you wanted help. Okay. I hear you. But I'm not going to tell you what you already know."
I stared at her. My pulse kicked up, frustration rising hot and sharp in my chest.
"What the hell does that mean?"
"It means you've been waiting for him to notice you're lonely.
You've been setting places at the table and cooking meals he doesn't eat and sitting in that big house by yourself, hoping he'll figure it out on his own.
" She shook her head. "He's not going to, Lena.
You know he's not. Men like Theo don't notice what they're not looking at. "
"So what am I supposed to do? Just — just show up at one of his restaurants and wave my arms until he sees me?"
"Yes. Exactly that."
The word hung in the air between us. I opened my mouth, closed it again. Maggie wasn't joking. She was dead serious.
"Stop waiting for him to come to you," she said. "Go to him. Put yourself in his world. Make him look at you."
The words hit me like a fist. Go to him. Put myself in his world, in that sleek expensive space full of cameras and investors and Bianca with her sharp smile and her diamonds. The world that didn't have room for me anymore.
"I can't?—"
"Yes, you can. You've been standing back and letting him pull away because you're scared of what it means if you push and he still doesn't see you. But you can't fix this from a distance, Lena. You have to go where he is, look him in the eye, and make him see what's happening to your marriage."
My hands were shaking again. I pressed them flat against the host stand, grounding myself in the smooth worn wood. This was the restaurant where I'd grown up. I knew every inch of this place. It was mine. It had always been mine.
Theo's world wasn't.
But Maggie was right. God, she was right, and I hated it.
I could keep waiting here, keep setting tables and running the dining room and hoping he'd remember to look my way. Or I could go where he was and make him see what was happening. The first choice was safe. Familiar. I knew how to do it because I'd been doing it for a year, maybe longer.
The second choice felt like stepping off a cliff.
"Okay," I said.
"Okay?"
I took a breath. Let it out. "Okay. I'll go. I'll — I'll find him and I'll make him listen." The words felt strange in my mouth, like I was trying on someone else's certainty. "I'll go to him."
Maggie's expression softened. Just a fraction, but enough that I could see the worry underneath the stubbornness. She reached out and tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear, the same gesture she'd made a hundred times when we were kids.
"You sure?"
I wasn't. Not even a little. My stomach was a knot of nerves and my heart was beating so hard I could feel it in my throat. But I nodded anyway.
"I have to try. If I don't — if I just keep waiting and hoping — I'm going to lose him. I think I'm already losing him." I swallowed. "I'll go now. Tonight."
"Tonight?"
The word hung there. I could hear the question in it, the surprise. Tomorrow would be easier. Tomorrow I could call first, make a plan, give myself time to figure out what I was going to say when I got there. Tomorrow I could be reasonable about it.
But tomorrow I'd find a reason not to go at all.
"If I wait I'll talk myself out of it," I said. "I'll come up with a dozen reasons why it's a bad idea and then tomorrow will turn into next week and nothing will change. It has to be now."
Maggie studied me for a long moment. Then she nodded and pulled the towel off her shoulder, tossing it onto the counter.
She glanced toward the dining room, already doing the math in her head.
Halfway through service, three tables still waiting for dessert and another four that would need their checks in the next twenty minutes.
"All right," she said. "Go. I'll cover the floor."
"You sure you can handle it?"
"Lena." She gave me a look. "I've been running this dining room since before you could reach the top shelf of the wine rack. I think I can handle one night without you."
She said it like she meant it, but we both knew it wasn't about whether she could do it.
We'd covered for each other a hundred times over the years.
She knew where I kept the reservation book, which tables tipped well and which ones needed the check dropped fast before they started complaining.
She knew the rhythm of the room the same way I did.
She gave me a small smile, but it didn't reach her eyes. There was something else there. Worry, maybe. Or hope.
"Go," she said. "Find him. Make him listen."
I pulled my phone from my pocket and opened the calendar Theo's assistant kept updated.
There was a note at the top: Marchand Group investor dinner, 7:30, Adriatico.
One of his restaurants. The flagship, the one he'd opened five years ago when the show took off.
I'd been there once, maybe twice, always on his arm for some charity event or premiere. Never just the two of us.
Well. Tonight that was going to change.
I grabbed my coat from the hook by the kitchen door and slung my bag over my shoulder. Maggie was already moving toward the couple by the window, pulling her order pad from her apron pocket. She glanced back at me and jerked her chin toward the door.
"Go."
I went.
The night air hit me cold and sharp when I stepped outside, carrying the smell of rain and asphalt and the faint greasy tang from the diner two blocks over.
I pulled my coat tighter and started walking toward where I'd parked the car, my heels clicking on the sidewalk.
I focused on the sound to keep myself from turning around.
Go where he is. Make him see what's happening.
I could do that. I had to do that.
The restaurant was in the neighborhood where I'd grown up, the same streets Theo and I used to walk when we were young and broke and stupid in love.
We'd worked side by side at my family's place back then, splitting tips and dreaming about the restaurant we'd open together someday.
That was before his name got big. Before the television cameras and the investors and the empire that swallowed him whole.
I unlocked the car and slid into the driver's seat, my hands gripping the steering wheel hard enough that my knuckles went white. The gold band on my finger pressed into my skin, a reminder of the promise we'd made twelve years ago. For better or worse. In sickness and in health.
I'd meant it then. I meant it now.
But I wasn't going to keep carrying this marriage alone.
I started the engine and pulled out onto the street, heading toward the center of the city where the buildings got taller and the lights got brighter.
Toward Theo's world. Toward the investor dinner and the sleek dining room and whatever I was going to find when I got there.
My stomach twisted, nerves fluttering under my ribs like something alive, but I didn't slow down.
Maggie was right.
I had to stop waiting.