Chapter Seven—Chris #2
Two million people. I hear Fenton from months ago.
She’s got the social media thing, but how much of her day can that really take?
I hadn’t argued. Why would I? It sounded close enough to what I’d believed.
Lorna didn’t have a real job anymore. Not the way I thought of work. No office. No board. No employees I ever saw walking through our home.
I rub the side of my thumb against the condensation on my water glass. A memory comes back with enough detail to make me uncomfortable.
Saturday morning, almost a year ago. I’d been home since Thursday night, which qualified as a long stretch by then. Lorna had made breakfast and brought everything to the island.
Eggs, toast, oranges, and coffee. I was reading an email from Denver.
“I hit a milestone this week,” she’d said.
I looked up. “Yeah?”
She was holding her coffee near her mouth, smiling in that contained way she does when she’s trying not to seem too pleased with herself. “Five hundred thousand.”
I glanced at the email again. “Followers?”
“Newsletter subscribers.”
“That’s great, babe.”
“It is.”
I smiled at her. Then I went back to my phone.
The email was about a variance in projected construction costs. I remember that because I called Jensen afterward and spent forty minutes discussing it.
Lorna stayed at the island for a while.
At some point, she got up, but I hadn’t noticed when.
Back at Richard’s table, I can remember the breakfast clearly enough to see the blue mug she was using but can’t remember asking a single question.
Five hundred thousand subscribers should have prompted several.
How many had she started with?
How quickly was it growing?
What did half a million subscribers mean for the company?
Was she excited?
I asked none of them.
By dinner that night, I’d probably forgotten the number.
The uncomfortable sensation in my stomach deepens.
Fenton said she was bored. He said she had too much unstructured time when I traveled.
I believed him because it matched what I already assumed about her life. Except half a million people were opening something she built a year ago. Now more than two million people follow her work closely enough to notice when she disappears for four days.
I take out my phone beneath the edge of the table. For the first time, I search for my wife’s business.
Not her Instagram, but the company. Raney Media appears immediately.
There’s a website I’ve never opened, so I tap it.
The home page looks nothing like a hobby. There are current brand partnerships, an archive of articles and newsletters, travel guides and recipe collections. Interviews and videos, plus a page for press inquiries.
I open the About section. Lorna’s photograph fills the top half of the screen. Below it are names. Brooke is operations and partnerships. Mia handles editorial and community.
Another woman named Erin works on contract as video editor.
I know Brooke’s name because she has called the penthouse. I assumed she was a friend of my wife’s. I don’t think I’ve ever met Mia and certainly not Erin.
I scroll farther down the page. There are press mentions from publications I read.
One profile estimates the company’s annual reach. Another discusses conversion rates and sponsor demand.
I stop scrolling.
Fenton wasn’t slightly wrong. He was wrong about the entire structure of Lorna’s days. Wrong enough that a stranger at dinner understands my wife’s career better than the two people closest to her.
One of those people is me. Fenton not knowing is understandable. Me having no idea is inexcusable.
I look across the room at Camille laughing with her fiancé. Lorna has spent eighteen months telling me someone is paying extraordinary attention to her.
I kept treating that claim as less plausible partly because I pictured my wife alone in the penthouse with too much time to notice ordinary things while two million people watch her.
Hundreds apparently noticed within days when she stopped appearing. Her work requires her to tell strangers where she travels, what she buys, where she eats, and what she likes.
Visibility is the business.
I know enough about risk to understand what visibility creates.
My appetite disappears completely.
Fenton described Lorna as bored.
I close the website.
There’s probably an explanation for that. Maybe he never looked closely either.
Maybe I made the assumption first, and Fenton repeated it because it fit what I’d already told him.
That possibility doesn’t improve anything. I should have known all this and can’t blame my assistant for not knowing details of my wife’s business when he works for me, not her.
I’m to blame for my ignorance. No one else.
Someone proposes a toast, and I lift my glass because everyone else does. I don’t hear most of it.
The question has already started working its way through everything I thought I understood.
If Fenton was this wrong about what Lorna does all day, how much weight should I have given his judgment about what those days were doing to her?
I don’t answer it yet. I can’t absorb all the implications in public.
I thank Richard before coffee and leave.
Outside, the night air is cooler than it was when I arrived. The valet brings the car around, but I don’t pull away immediately.
I open Raney Media again. This time I read more than the surface details.
The newsletter archive goes back nearly four years, starting a couple of months after we met, though she doesn’t really mention me.
There are hundreds of entries. Some are short, but others are long enough that I have to scroll several times before reaching the bottom.
I open one about Lisbon, and my throat tightens. It’s about a bakery we found on our second morning there.
She doesn’t mention me by name. She describes getting lost, ordering coffee in terrible Portuguese, and discovering that the best parts of travel happen after the itinerary fails.
I remember that morning, but I don’t remember her turning it into work.
I back out and open another. Then another. By the fourth, I stop.
My wife didn’t fill empty hours with a hobby. She built something.
I was close enough to sleep beside her every night I was home and far enough away that I never bothered to find out what.
My phone buzzes with a call from Fenton. I stare at his name and for the first time since I hired him, I don’t answer immediately.
The call stops, and a message appears seconds later:
Need anything before I wrap up?
I look at it for several seconds.
Then I type:
No.
I put the phone in the passenger seat and pull away from the curb.
I have no reason to be angry with Fenton. He gave me an opinion about Lorna’s life, and I accepted it.
That’s solely my fault. By the time I reach the penthouse, I’ve accepted that.
Fenton was wrong about my wife. Most importantly, so was I.
I unlock the door and walk into the dark apartment.
The stove light is on. I’ve started leaving it that way because Lorna always did.
My jacket goes over the back of a chair instead of into the closet. The rings are still in the inside pocket. I can feel their weight when the fabric swings.
I take out my phone and open Lorna’s contact. I could call the old number again and leave another voicemail she won’t answer.
This time, I know one thing I could say differently.
I looked. Too late and for the wrong reason, but I finally looked.
My thumb hovers over her name, but I don’t call. Telling Lorna I spent an evening discovering her career doesn’t deserve credit. It doesn’t answer what happened in the penthouse. It doesn’t undo the conversation at the hotel.
I set the phone down, feeling every piece of culpability that I own. I should have known what my wife built before a stranger had to explain it to me. Where else have I failed her?