10. Theo
THEO
I stood on the walkway outside Maggie's house, staring at the front door. The porch light was on. I could see moths circling it, batting themselves against the glass over and over. My heart was pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat, in my wrists, hammering away like it wanted out.
The drive over had been a blur. All I'd been able to think about was Lena, about her things missing from the house, about the ring I'd found at Adriatico sitting cold on that table after she'd left it there.
Whatever was wrong, I could fix it. I just needed to talk to her, to see her face. Find out what she needed and give it to her. That was all. Simple.
I knocked. Three solid knocks that sounded louder than I meant them to.
The wait felt like forever. My pulse was racing. I heard movement inside, footsteps coming closer, and then the lock turned.
Maggie opened the door.
I'd expected some surprise, maybe some concern, the usual worry she showed when family needed something. She'd always kept out of whatever went on between Lena and me, stayed neutral at family dinners, kept things pleasant. But the woman standing in front of me now didn't look neutral at all.
Her eyes swept over me, cold and hard, taking in everything from my rumpled shirt to the car still idling in the driveway behind me, headlights cutting across her lawn. Whatever she saw didn't soften her expression one bit.
She didn't say hello. She didn't smile. She just stood there in the doorway with one hand on the frame and the other on the door itself, blocking the entrance. Her expression was flat and cold, the kind of look that said I wasn't welcome here and she wasn't going to pretend otherwise.
I didn't understand it. Maggie and I had always gotten along fine. We were family. But she was looking at me now like I was a stranger who'd done something unforgivable, and I had no idea what I could have possibly done to earn a look like that.
"Theo," she said.
Just my name. Nothing else.
"Maggie." My voice came out rough. "I need to see Lena."
"She doesn't want to see you."
The words hit me square in the chest. "Please. I just need to talk to her. Five minutes."
"She's been clear," Maggie said. Her jaw was tight, her shoulders pulled back and square, her whole body a wall between me and the inside of that house. She looked ready to physically throw me off the porch if I tried to push past her. "You should go."
"I'm not leaving," I said. The desperation was creeping into my voice and I couldn't stop it. "Not until I see her."
I took a step forward. Maggie didn't budge.
"Please," I said again. "Maggie, please, just let me?—"
Maggie's eyes narrowed, her mouth opening to tell me exactly where I could go, but then I heard another voice behind her. Softer. Quieter.
"It's okay, Maggie."
Lena.
Everything in me went still.
Maggie glanced back over her shoulder, hesitated for a second, then stepped aside. Not far. Just enough that I could see past her into the hallway, where Lena was standing with her arms crossed over her chest and her face composed into something blank and unreadable.
She was here. She was listening. Whatever this was, I could fix it. I could make her understand.
God, she looked tired.
There were shadows under her eyes I hadn't noticed before, deep and dark like she hadn't slept.
Her hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail, a few strands falling loose around her face, and she was wearing jeans and one of her old cardigans.
The gray one. The one with the buttons that didn't quite line up right, the one she'd had for years, the one she wore at home when it was just the two of us.
She'd left the expensive things behind. She'd taken this.
I stared at her, trying to find something in her face that looked like the woman I'd married. Some warmth. Some recognition. But there was nothing. She looked at me the way she might look at a stranger.
My stomach dropped.
Then I saw her hands.
Her left hand was resting on her right arm, fingers curled loosely just above her elbow, and the ring—the ring was gone.
I'd known it was gone. I'd found it myself at Adriatico, slipped it into my pocket and kept it there, but actually seeing her hand bare like that, seeing the faint line of paler skin where the ring used to sit, hit me harder than I'd expected.
She'd worn that ring for twelve years. Every single day.
Now there was just her finger. Naked. Wrong.
My stomach twisted hard enough that I felt it in my ribs.
"Lena," I said. My voice cracked a little on her name and I cleared my throat, tried again. "Lena, I?—"
"What do you want, Theo?"
Her voice was calm. Too calm. She wasn't angry. She wasn't upset. She was just... flat. Like she was talking to someone she barely knew, someone who didn't matter. It cut deeper than if she'd yelled at me.
"I want to fix this," I said. The words came out fast, desperate. "Whatever's wrong, whatever I did, just tell me and I'll fix it. I swear. I'll do whatever it takes."
She didn't say anything. She just looked at me with those tired, blank eyes, waiting.
I fumbled for something, anything that would make her understand I meant it.
"I know you're upset," I said. "I know something happened and I know it's about me, something I did or—or didn't do, and I—" I stopped.
I jammed my hands into my pockets and felt the ring there, smooth and solid against my palm.
"Just tell me what you need. Tell me what you want and I'll make it happen. Anything."
"What I want," Lena repeated slowly. Her tone didn't shift. It was still flat, still distant.
"Anything," I said again, and I meant it.
I would have given her anything in that moment, anything at all, if she would just come home.
"Do you want to travel? We could go somewhere, anywhere you want.
Paris, Tokyo, the Maldives, wherever. I'll clear my schedule.
Or if you want to stay here, we could?—"
I scrambled, trying to think of what she might want, what would be big enough to show her I was serious.
"I could get you a reservation at Ostara," I said.
Maggie made a small noise in her throat, something between a scoff and a growl. I ignored her. I kept my eyes on Lena.
"Ostara," I said again. "You know, the place in New York everyone's been talking about.
Chef Maren just got her third Michelin star last month and the waitlist is eighteen months long, but I know her.
I could call her right now, tonight, and get you a table this week.
Best table in the house. You could bring Maggie, make it a whole trip.
Stay at the Pierre, see a show, go shopping, whatever you want. My treat. Everything."
I was talking too fast. I knew I was talking too fast, the words spilling out in a rush, but I couldn't stop them.
"Chef Maren does this tasting menu," I said. "Fifteen courses. Everything's incredible. She sources from this farm upstate, everything's seasonal, hyper-local, sustainable. The foie gras course alone is unbelievable, she does this thing with?—"
This was real. This mattered. Chef Maren didn't take calls from just anyone. This was the kind of thing people waited years for, the kind of thing that showed I was serious, that I meant what I said. Lena would see that. She had to.
"No."
The word was soft but it stopped me cold.
I blinked. "What?"
"No, Theo." Lena's voice was still calm, still even, but there was something underneath it now. Something sharp. "I don't want a reservation."
That didn't make sense. Ostara was the best restaurant in the country right now. People would kill for a table there. I was offering her something real, something that mattered, and she was saying no like I'd offered her nothing at all.
I stared at her. "Okay. Okay, then something else. Just tell me. What do you want? Name it and it's yours."
She uncrossed her arms. Her hand drifted up toward her face, fingers moving like she was going to brush the hair back from her forehead, but then she stopped halfway. Her hand hovered there near her collarbone for a second, then she dropped it back to her side.
"What do I miss more than anything else?" she asked.
I blinked again. "What?"
"What do I miss, Theo?" She said it slower this time, like she was asking a child to think very carefully about the answer. "More than anything else in the world. What is it?"
My mind went completely blank.
I stood there on her sister's porch with moths circling the light above my head and I tried to think. What did she miss? What had we lost? There had to be an answer. There had to be something I could say that would fix this.
"Us," I said finally. "You miss us. The way we used to be."
Her face didn't change. Not even a flicker.
"When we first started out," I said, the words coming faster now as I tried to find the right answer somewhere in the mess of my own thoughts.
"Back when we were planning the first restaurant together, when it was just you and me figuring it all out.
You miss that. The partnership we had. Working together on something that mattered to both of us, building something from nothing. That's what you miss. Right?"
That was it. That had to be it. We'd built something together, the two of us, back when we were nobody, back when all we had was a dream and cheap coffee and each other.
And then I'd kept building and somewhere along the way she'd stopped being part of it.
That made sense. I could see it now, clear as anything.
I could fix that. I could bring her back in, give her a real role, make her part of the empire the way she'd been part of that first restaurant. We could be partners again.
Lena looked at me for a long time. Long enough that I started to think maybe I'd gotten it right. But then she shook her head.
Just once. A small, sad movement that made something in my chest ache so badly I had to fight to keep breathing.
"You don't know," she said quietly.
The ache turned into something worse. Something sharp and cold.
"Then tell me." My voice was too loud. I heard it echo off the houses across the street and I forced myself to lower it. "Lena, please. Just tell me. I can't fix it if I don't know what's broken. I can't?—"
"I shouldn't have to tell you," she said. Her voice was still quiet but there was steel underneath it now, something hard and immovable that I'd never heard from her before. "If you don't know, Theo, then me telling you won't help. It won't change anything."
"That's not fair," I said. The desperation was back, clawing its way up my throat and making it hard to breathe. "You can't just leave and not tell me why. You can't just walk out and expect me to figure it out on my own when I don't even know what I?—"
I stopped. Took a breath. Tried to steady myself. My heart was hammering so hard it hurt.
"I love you," I said. Quieter this time. "You know I love you. Whatever I did, whatever happened, I didn't mean it. I would never hurt you on purpose. Never. You have to know that."
"I know you didn't mean it," Lena said. She sounded so tired. Like she'd been carrying something heavy for a long time and had finally set it down. "That's the problem, Theo."
I didn't understand. I opened my mouth to say so, to ask her what the hell that was supposed to mean, but she was already turning away.
"Lena—"
"Go home, Theo."
"Lena, wait, just let me?—"
"Go home." She said it again, firmer this time, each word deliberate and final. And then she turned around and walked away.
Just like that.
She walked back down the hallway, her footsteps soft on the floor, her shoulders straight and her head high, and then she was gone. Around a corner, out of sight, leaving me standing there on the porch staring at the empty space where she'd been.
I didn't understand. I'd offered her anything.
Anything in the world. The best restaurant in the country, a table people would kill for, and she'd said no like it meant nothing.
I'd told her I'd fix it, whatever it was.
I'd given her the right answer about the partnership, about what we'd built together, about bringing her back into the work that mattered, and she'd just shaken her head like I'd said something wrong.
Like I'd missed the point entirely. What was I missing?
What else could I possibly give her that I hadn't already offered?
My heart was racing. My hands were clenched so tight in my pockets that my knuckles ached, the ring pressing hard into my palm.
Maggie was still standing in the doorway. She looked at me like I was something unpleasant she'd stepped in.
"You heard her," Maggie said.
"Please," I said. My voice sounded broken. "Just let me talk to her for one more minute. One minute. I just need?—"
"She asked you to leave," Maggie said. "So leave."
She stepped back into the house. The door swung shut between us, solid and final, and I heard the lock turn with a heavy click.