Chapter Nine — Grace
I sat in my car outside the studio for almost twenty minutes before I made myself go inside, scrolling back through old photos on my phone without deciding to, the way you pick at a scab you know you shouldn't touch.
A photo from four years ago, Magnus grinning in front of a rented conference room in Charlotte, the week the Singapore deal had briefly seemed alive.
A photo from our tenth anniversary, the two of us on a hotel balcony he'd booked without telling me the room cost more than we could reasonably afford that month.
A photo from just last month, both of us at the studio launch party, his arm around my waist, both of us laughing at something Tiffany had said.
None of it told me anything I didn't already know.
All of it felt suddenly unreliable, like evidence in a case I hadn't known I was building.
I finally went inside because the parking lot light had drawn a moth against my windshield and the small, ordinary annoyance of it broke whatever spell had kept me sitting there.
The studio was empty except for the hum of the printer finishing an overnight run, Tiffany's desk lamp still on though she'd left hours ago, and I sat at my own desk for a while without turning on the overhead lights, just the glow of my laptop screen, working up the nerve to make a call I'd been avoiding since Alden's warning at the mixer.
I tried, for a while, to distract myself with actual work, pulling up the Ashford production calendar and staring at it without absorbing a single line item.
Everything on the screen felt suddenly beside the point, a business I'd built that now seemed almost secondary to the question sitting unanswered in my chest. I closed the laptop eventually, unable to pretend at productivity any longer, and drove home with the radio off, the quiet giving the questions more room than I wanted them to have.
I lay awake most of that night beside Magnus, listening to his breathing slow into sleep, feeling like a stranger in my own bed for the first time in twelve years, studying the back of his neck in the dark like it might tell me something his face hadn't.
I called Elodie the next afternoon, alone in the studio after Tiffany had gone home early for a dentist appointment, the light going gray outside the window, the printer humming through its final run of the day.
"I need you to tell me what's going on," I said, before she could deflect, before I lost the nerve I'd spent the whole drive home the night before building.
"Alden told me to talk to Magnus. You've been acting strange around me for over a month.
I would like to know why, and I'd like you to actually tell me instead of finding a reason to change the subject. "
There was a long pause on the other end, long enough that I thought she might hang up. "Grace, that dinner was private. Alden would be furious if he knew I said anything to you."
"I'm his wife," I said. "Whatever Magnus said about being married to me stopped being private the moment other people knew something about my own marriage that I didn't. You understand that, right? That I'm the last person who's found out about something everyone else already knows?"
Another pause, longer, and I heard her exhale slowly on the other end, the sound of someone deciding to stop protecting a secret that had clearly been eating at her for weeks.
"He's said things," she said finally. "More than once.
That he wonders if he married too young.
That he wonders what his life would look like if he'd never gotten married at all.
Alden's come home from a couple of those dinners and just sat there, not saying much, and when I finally got it out of him, it was because of Magnus.
It's why I've been so strange around you.
I like you, Grace. I hate knowing something like this and watching you not know it. "
"How long have you known?"
"A few weeks. Since the gala, actually. Alden told me the night we got home, and I've been sick about it ever since, trying to figure out if it was my place to say anything. I decided it wasn't. Then I kept running into you and feeling worse every single time."
"You could have just told me at the gala."
"I know. I've thought about that a hundred times since. I told myself it wasn't my secret to tell. I think I was also just scared of what it would do, watching you find out because of me instead of because of him."
Something in my chest went very cold and very still. "Did he say my name?"
Silence, the kind that stretches out and becomes its own weather.
"Elodie."
"Yes," she said quietly.
"What did he say?"
She told me. The dinner, several weeks back. The question someone had asked him directly, apparently after a run of similar comments over more than one of these dinners. The two words that had apparently ended the conversation at that table the way they were about to end something in mine.
Even Grace.
"How many dinners," I asked. "You said comments. Plural."
"I don't know exactly. Two, maybe three, that Alden's mentioned. I only found out about this specific one because Alden couldn't sleep that night. He kept saying he should have said something at the table and didn't."
"Do you know what he actually said, word for word, or just the gist of it?"
"Alden gave me most of it. He was pretty shaken up telling me, so I don't think he was embellishing." Elodie's voice softened. "For what it's worth, Grace, Alden said Magnus looked uncomfortable right after he said it. Like he knew immediately it was too far. He just didn't take it back."
"That almost makes it worse. Knowing he knew."
"I thought about that too. I don't know which is worse either."
"Why didn't he?"
"I don't know, Grace. I think none of them wanted to be the one who made it weird."
"Thank you for finally telling me. I mean that, even though I know it wasn't easy for you either."
"I'm sorry it took me this long. I should have called you the morning after the gala instead of letting weeks go by."
"You told me eventually. That counts for something."
"I hope so. I've felt sick about this for a month."
I thanked her, my voice steadier than I felt, and hung up, and sat alone in my studio long after the light outside had gone fully dark, the overhead fluorescents buzzing faintly, surrounded by the physical record of twelve years I thought I understood.
Our courthouse wedding photo, curling slightly at one corner, tucked into the frame of my desk mirror, the two of us laughing at something the photographer had said.
The first business cards I'd designed for Murphy Freight Solutions back when it was three trucks and a warehouse he could barely afford to lease, printed on cardstock we picked out together at a discount print shop because it was the only luxury we allowed ourselves that year.
An old invitation suite from a friend's wedding, tucked into a drawer I hadn't opened in years, the first paid job that ever made me believe I could do this for a living, a job I'd taken instead of a graduate program because we needed the money more than I needed the degree, a decision I had never once regretted until this exact moment, sitting in the dark, wondering what else I'd given up that had quietly been recast as something taken from him.
None of those objects had changed. What they meant had.
I texted Tiffany once, a single line, I need to talk to you tonight, it's not an emergency but it's not nothing either, and she called within a minute, and I told her everything in a voice that surprised me with how flat it stayed, like I was reciting a timeline instead of describing my own marriage.
"What are you going to do?" Tiffany asked.
"I don't know yet. I need to talk to him before I know anything."
"Do you want me to come over?"
"No. I need to do this myself."
"Are you sure?" Tiffany pressed. "I can be there in fifteen minutes, no questions asked."
"I'm sure. I need to sit with this alone for a bit before I do anything else."
"Okay. Text me when you're home safe, at least."
"I will." I sat there a long time after we hung up, turning twelve years over in my hands like something I was no longer sure I recognized, running through every trip he'd taken, every risk he'd weighed out loud at our kitchen counter, every time I'd told him to go after something and meant it.
Tiffany texted again ten minutes later, unwilling to leave it entirely alone. I'm not coming over, but I'm awake all night if you need anything. Also I hate him a little right now, for the record, even though I know that's not helpful.
It's a little helpful, I texted back. Thank you.
Go easy on yourself tonight, whatever you decide to do with all this. You didn't do anything wrong here.
I'll try, I typed back, meaning it more than I expected to.
I thought about calling my mother, and decided against it, not ready yet to say any of it out loud to someone who'd want an immediate verdict on what it meant.
I thought about driving straight home and getting it over with, and decided against that too, some instinct telling me I needed to arrive with a clear head instead of the raw, unfiltered fury sitting in my chest at that exact moment.
I sat in the dark studio instead, letting the anger cool into something more precise, something I could actually use instead of something that would just burn through the conversation before I got any real answers out of it.
I walked through the space slowly while I waited for my own nerve to catch up with my anger, past Priscilla's desk, past the framed proof of our very first Ashford invitation hanging by the door, a small monument to a version of my life I'd built with my own hands regardless of anything happening in my marriage.
It steadied me, oddly, looking at that framed proof, a reminder that whatever happened in the next hour, there was at least one part of my life that was unambiguously, entirely mine.
By the time I finally locked up and drove home, it was well past ten, and I did not go home that night until I had decided exactly what I was going to ask him, and exactly how I was going to watch his face when he answered.