8. Nell #2
I could feel the weight of it. The one promise that hadn't been about the business or the house or any of it.
"And you were," I said. "You kept that promise for five years. You came home. You were there. Even when you had shows. Even when you had meetings. You came home."
I looked at him.
"And this year you weren't there. You were in New York. You didn't come home. You didn't call. You didn't even remember until I called you."
I watched him hear it. Watched him understand that I'd had to remind him.
"I know," he said, and there was something breaking in his voice. "I know. I should have been there. I should have remembered. I'm sorry."
"You forgot."
"I know."
"You forgot the one day."
"I know. Nell, I'm sorry. I can't—I can't take it back. But I'm here now. I'm trying."
I looked at him.
"And the night I made you something," I said. "Do you remember that night?"
He went very still.
"Do you?" I said.
"Yes."
"I sent you two messages," I said. "I said, 'I made you something. I've been working on it since March.'"
I watched him hear it. The date. March.
"And then I said, 'It's not finished and I don't want to finish it alone.'"
I could hear my own voice. Quiet. Precise. The way it got when I was hurt and trying not to show it.
"And you wrote back," I said.
I let it sit there between us.
"'I can't. Maybe after.'"
I looked at him.
"You didn't ask what I'd made. You didn't ask to see it. You didn't say you wanted to know. You just told me you couldn't give me a night."
I took a breath.
"It was never the woman, Beckett. She told you what I was worth and you agreed with her."
He looked like I'd hit him.
"Nell, that's not?—"
"You stood there in that ballroom and you let her say my mother's life was worthless. That thirty-one years on a floor like this one didn't matter. That it wasn't a worthy tradition."
My voice was very quiet now.
"And you turned it into branding."
"I didn't understand what she was saying?—"
"You forgot March," I said. "The one day you promised me you'd never forget. The one promise you made me that didn't have anything to do with the business or the house or any of it. Just you and me and the day we lost her."
I looked at him.
"And when I told you I'd made you something, you didn't even ask what it was."
"I didn't know," he said, and I could hear something breaking in his voice. "I didn't understand?—"
"You didn't look."
He stopped.
"What?"
"You didn't look at me, Beckett. Not once. Not at the gala when she said what she said. Not in March when you should have been here. Not when I told you I'd made you something and I needed you to help me finish it."
"I'm looking now."
"Now," I said. "After six days. After I left my ring on your table and flew home and you had to drive five hours to stand outside my building because I wouldn't let you in."
I looked at him standing there in the doorway. At his hands that were cut up from making something. At the coat he'd been wearing for days. At the man I'd married six years ago who'd driven five hours to stand outside my building and wait for me to talk to him.
And I felt something settle in me that I hadn't even known was still waiting.
"You came here with a deed," I said. "And a schedule. And a completion date."
"I'm trying to fix this?—"
"You came here with terms, Beckett."
He looked at me.
"I'm not a transaction," I said.
The words came out quiet. Flat. No heat in them at all.
"I'm your wife. And you've been standing in this doorway for twenty minutes and you haven't said one thing to me that a lawyer couldn't have said better."
I watched him try to find something to say. Something that would make it right. Something that would get him past the line Hazel had drawn and he'd been careful not to cross.
But there wasn't anything.
And I think he knew it.
I stepped back.
Put my hand on the door.
"Nell—"
I closed it.
Not loud. Not angry. Just closed.
I stood there for a moment with my hand on the wood and my forehead almost touching it.
I could feel the floor behind me. Every machine running. Every person watching. Nobody moving. The whole room holding its breath.
Then I turned around.
Ray was still standing by the third machine with the wrench in his hand. Hazel was at the table with the ledger open in front of her but she wasn't looking at it. Dorcas was at her station with her hands on the cloth, not moving it. Kiana was frozen at the cutting table.
They were all watching me.
Waiting to see if I'd fall apart.
I looked at them. At the floor I'd bought with my mother's house. At the people who'd known her. Who'd worked beside her. Who were still here because I'd kept the doors open.
Then I walked back across the floor.
My legs were steady under me. My hands were steady. I wasn't shaking. I wasn't crying.
I'd spent all night last night taking apart hospital blankets until I found the fault. I'd sat on the floor of the office and couldn't stand up.
I was standing now.
I walked back to the machine I'd been checking. Picked up where I'd left off. Checked the tension. Ran the thread through. Made the adjustment.
Ray came over a minute later. He still had the wrench.
"You all right?"
"I'm all right."
He looked at me. Then he nodded and went back to his machine.
The work kept moving.