CHAPTER SIX
PIERCE
The boutique on Providence Road specialized in clothing that didn't display prices on the tags, which I'd learned, over the years, was usually a good sign for exactly the effect I was going for.
I'd driven past it twice before finally parking, running through the errand in my head like it required more planning than it actually did, and by the time I walked in I'd already half convinced myself this was nothing more complicated than any husband shopping for his wife ahead of an important night.
"I'm looking for something for my wife," I told the saleswoman, a composed, elegant woman named Vivienne who'd helped me twice before, for anniversaries that had gone well enough to earn a repeat visit. "There's a gala coming up. Something elegant. Understated, maybe. Nothing too loud."
"Understated," Vivienne repeated, already moving toward a rack near the back of the store. "Color palette?"
"Neutral, I think. Maybe navy, or a deep gray. Something that reads sophisticated without trying too hard."
She pulled three options, each one beautiful in a controlled, careful way, silk and fine wool in shades that could have belonged to any well-dressed woman at any gala in the country, interchangeable in a way I found myself, uncomfortably, appreciating.
I thought, without meaning to, of the deep green dress Laurel had worn to the Dunhill all those years ago, the one that had made her stand out in a room designed to make everyone look the same, the one I'd loved specifically because it hadn't matched anything else in that ballroom.
"This one," I said, pointing to a slate gray dress with clean lines and no embellishment at all. "This is good."
"Excellent choice. Would you like to see anything with more color? We have a beautiful emerald piece that just came in, similar cut."
"No, this is fine. This is what I want."
I didn't examine, in the moment, why the word emerald had made something in my chest tighten, or why I'd said no to it faster than the question deserved.
I paid for the dress, and while Vivienne wrapped it, I found myself at the jewelry case near the register, looking at a simple diamond bracelet that would look, I already knew, exactly right against the gray silk, tasteful and expensive in a way that photographed well and drew no attention to itself.
"That one too," I said, and left the store twenty minutes later with a bag I told myself represented nothing more complicated than a husband spoiling his wife ahead of a big night, generosity, plain and simple, exactly the gesture any man in my position might make without a second thought.
At a red light three blocks from the boutique, my phone buzzed with a text from Whitfield, unrelated to anything, just a quick note about a permit variance he wanted my opinion on before the next board meeting.
I answered it, and then, before I could think better of it, typed out a second message.
Sandra mentioned running into Laurel at the grocery store.
Small world. I looked at it a moment, thumb hovering, then deleted it without sending.
There was no good reason to delete it. I told myself I just didn't want to clutter a business text with something personal, and drove the rest of the way to the office without examining the explanation any further.
I gave it to her that evening, at home, watching her face as she opened the box, and her genuine pleasure at the gift did something to loosen the knot that had been sitting in my chest since the boutique.
"Pierce, this is beautiful." She held the dress up against herself in the hallway mirror, turning slightly to see it from different angles. "What's the occasion? You don't usually just buy me things."
"No occasion. Well, there's a smaller Alliance dinner next month, nothing major, but I thought you might want something new for it. If you want to come, that is. No pressure either way."
"I'd love to come." She was still looking at the dress in the mirror, something thoughtful crossing her face. "It's gorgeous. Kind of a departure from what I usually wear, though. Very buttoned up."
"You'll look incredible in it. You look incredible in everything.
" I meant it, and the words came easily, because they were true, because Laurel would have looked beautiful in anything from a department store clearance rack or a designer showroom with equal ease.
It was a different question entirely, one I didn't let myself ask out loud, whether the dress was for her or for the room she'd be standing in.
"Are you trying to tell me something about my wardrobe?" she asked, half joking, turning to face me with an eyebrow raised in the specific way she did when she was testing whether a joke would land or whether something more serious sat underneath it.
"No. God, no. I just wanted to get you something nice.
" I crossed the hallway and pulled her against me, resting my chin on top of her head, and felt her relax into it, the question dissolving into the easy physical shorthand we'd built over nine years together.
"You could wear a paper bag to this thing and I'd still think you were the best-looking person in the room. "
"A paper bag might actually be more comfortable than three-inch heels, for the record."
"I'll keep that in mind for next time." I kissed the top of her head, and we stood like that a moment longer, and I told myself, again, that this was simple generosity, nothing more complicated underneath it, a good husband treating his wife well ahead of a nice evening out.
It was only later, alone in my office at home, going over the guest list for the gala one more time before bed, that the thought I'd been avoiding all evening finally caught up with me.
I was already picturing the dinner, weeks out, running through who'd be there, which investors, which board members, which wives, and somewhere in that mental rehearsal I'd started imagining Laurel specifically in the gray dress, specifically not saying anything too loud or too funny or too much like herself, specifically fading into a room the way the dress had been picked to fade.
I closed the laptop before I let the thought finish itself all the way through. There would be time to examine it properly. There was always, conveniently, time later, for the things I didn't especially want to look at now.
I went downstairs for a glass of water, and found myself standing at the kitchen counter longer than the errand required, looking out at the dark backyard through the window over the sink.
I thought about the version of myself who used to sit at Ruthie's bar, watching Laurel talk with her hands about a Great Dane named Princess Buttercup, entirely charmed by a woman who had absolutely no interest in performing sophistication for anyone.
I couldn't locate the exact moment that man had started wanting something different from her.
I only knew, standing there in the quiet kitchen, that the wanting had crept in somewhere, uninvited, and had apparently been growing for longer than I'd let myself notice.
I checked on Laurel before heading to bed myself, found her already asleep, the new dress still hanging on the back of the closet door where she'd left it, catching the low light from the hallway in a way that made the gray look almost silver.
I stood in the doorway a moment, looking at it, and thought, unbidden, of the green dress still hanging further back in that same closet, worn soft with age and use, the one I hadn't seen Laurel take out in longer than I wanted to count.
I told myself I'd ask her to wear the green one sometime soon, just because I missed it. I didn't ask. Not that week, and not the week after either.
The smaller Alliance dinner Laurel had agreed to came up faster than I expected, and the morning of it I found myself, unprompted, running through a mental checklist of things that had never once occurred to me to worry about before.
Whether the dinner conversation would drift into anything Laurel might not have context for.
Whether she'd meet anyone who'd ask a question that put her on the spot the way Marcus Hendricks's question about her work had briefly put me on the spot at lunch weeks earlier.
Whether the gray dress read as sophisticated the way I'd wanted it to, or whether it just read as generic, a woman dressed to disappear into a room rather than stand out in one.
I caught myself running through the list a second time over coffee and made myself stop, physically setting my mug down harder than I meant to, hard enough that Laurel glanced up from her own coffee across the table.
"You okay? You've got your work face on."
"Just thinking through tonight. No big deal." I smiled at her, and meant it as reassurance, though I wasn't entirely sure which one of us I was trying to reassure. "You excited?"
"I am, actually. It's been a while since we did one of these together.
" She reached across the table and squeezed my hand, and something in the easy warmth of the gesture made the mental checklist feel, briefly, embarrassing, a problem I'd invented out of nothing to solve.
"Should I wear the new dress or save it for the bigger gala? "
"Wear it tonight. See how it feels."
"Bossy." She said it fondly, standing to clear her mug, and I watched her go, and told myself that whatever unease I was carrying into tonight belonged entirely to me, some private, unexamined thing that had nothing to do with Laurel at all, and everything to do with a version of myself I hadn't yet worked up the nerve to look at directly.
I spent longer than I meant to that afternoon, between meetings, thinking about the dinner ahead, running through the guest list in my head, Aldrich and his wife, a couple of board members, a handful of investors I still needed to impress despite how far Redmond Development had already come.
I caught myself, somewhere around the third mental runthrough, actually rehearsing how I might redirect a conversation if Laurel said something too blunt or too funny for the room, and the ease with which the rehearsal came to me, unbidden and half-formed, sat uncomfortably at the back of my mind for the rest of the afternoon.
I didn't examine it closely. I told myself it was simple preparation, the kind any host does before an important dinner, anticipating conversational currents and steering them gently when needed.
It didn't occur to me, driving home to pick Laurel up, that the currents I was preparing to steer all seemed to originate from the same source, and that the source was never anyone but my own wife.
Naomi caught me on my way out, holding a garment bag. "The dry cleaner dropped off your good suit. Figured you'd want it for tonight instead of digging through your closet at the last minute."
"You think of everything."
"It's the job." She handed it over, then paused, studying me with the same mild curiosity she sometimes brought to conversations that had nothing to do with work. "You seem tense about tonight. Everything okay?"
"Just want it to go well. Big dinner, important people."
"Laurel's coming, right? She always makes these things more fun. Remember the Christmas party two years back, when she got half the room arguing about whether a hot dog counts as a sandwich?" Naomi laughed at the memory, entirely fond of it. "Best conversation of the whole night, honestly."
"Yeah," I said, something tightening briefly in my chest at the memory Naomi clearly treasured without any of the complicated static I'd apparently attached to it myself. "She's coming."
I drove home with the garment bag on the passenger seat, Naomi's easy, uncomplicated fondness for exactly the sort of moment I'd spent the whole afternoon quietly rehearsing how to prevent, and didn't examine that either, all the way home.