CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
DOMINIC
The month before the opening.
He understood, on some level, that he was in a different relationship with time than he’d been in the previous eighteen months.
Before, time had been a resource he’d been consuming — burning through the days toward a conversation he didn’t know how to have.
Now it was a thing he was inside, genuinely, in a way he hadn’t been for years.
Thursdays. The site visits. The Tuesday evenings when she’d started inviting him to her studio to look at work she was doing on other projects — not the Hudson Yards work, smaller things, the residential renovations she’d been doing that she’d always been slightly dismissive of and that he was seeing, now, were extraordinary.
She was extraordinary at everything she touched.
He understood that he’d known this and not known it simultaneously for four years.
He was learning to know it properly.
He ran into Claire at a dinner in October.
Mutual friends. The same social orbit that had always connected them, that he’d been gradually withdrawing from since the divorce and that she’d been navigating with her characteristic composure.
They stood together at the edge of the room for a few minutes.
“She took the commission,” Claire said.
“Yes.”
“How is it going?”
“The project is almost complete,” he said. “It’s extraordinary work.”
“I meant how are you.”
He looked at her.
Claire was exactly who she’d always been — composed, intelligent, honest. He’d spent ten years constructing a mythology around her. She was a real person. Less than the mythology, in the ways mythology was always more than its subject. Also more — sharper, clearer, more honestly herself.
“I’m better than I’ve been in two years,” he said.
She nodded. “She told me about your conversation. About being afraid.”
“I know. She told me you visited.”
“I should have done it sooner.”
“You did it,” he said. “It mattered.”
Claire looked at him.
“You should know,” she said, “that when I was with you — I could feel her. Not literally. But—” She paused. “The shape of her absence. The specific negative space.” She paused. “I should have said something sooner about that too.”
“We were both in denial,” he said.
“Yes.” She looked at her drink. “I was looking for the twenty-six-year-old version of both of us. She doesn’t exist anymore.” She smiled slightly. “Probably better this way.”
He looked at the room.
“Claire,” he said. “What we had at twenty-six was real.”
“Yes,” she said.
“It just ended,” he said. “At twenty-six. And then I spent ten years not letting it.”
“I know.” She held his gaze. “And I wasn’t honest enough about it when I came back. I let you believe it could be retrieved.” She paused. “I’m sorry for that.”
“I made my own choices,” he said.
“You did,” she agreed. “Terrible ones.” Her voice was not unkind.
“Terrible ones,” he agreed.
They stood in companionable quiet for a moment, which was the strangest possible quality for a conversation like this and also, somehow, the most appropriate.
“Go be good to her,” Claire said. “She’s worth being good to.”
“I know,” he said.
He went home and called Isla.
She answered on the third ring.
“It’s late,” she said.
“I know. I’m sorry.” He paused. “I ran into Claire.”
“Oh.” A beat. “How was that?”
“Fine,” he said. “Honest.” He paused. “She said to tell you—” He stopped. “Actually she didn’t say to tell you anything. I just wanted to tell you I’d seen her. So you had the full picture.”
A pause.
“Thank you,” she said. “For telling me.”
“Complete information,” he said. “From now on.”
“Yes,” she said. “From now on.”
They were quiet for a moment.
“Goodnight,” she said.
“Goodnight,” he said.
He put the phone down.
He thought: complete information. From now on.
He thought: that’s what honesty looks like when it’s a practice rather than a crisis.
He was learning.