CHAPTER FIFTEEN
LAUREL
I moved through the ballroom for the better part of an hour without Pierce approaching me directly, though I caught him glancing my way more than once, his conversation with the investors never quite fully holding his attention the way it should have.
I didn't wait for him. I introduced myself to people I'd never met, a city councilwoman named Patrice Okonkwo who turned out to be genuinely delightful, sharp and funny in a way that made the required small talk feel like an actual conversation, and a retired architect named Douglas who spent ten minutes telling me about a building preservation fight from decades earlier that I found myself completely absorbed in despite having no prior interest in historic zoning ordinances whatsoever.
"You're Pierce Redmond's wife," Patrice said at one point, not a question, just a statement of fact she'd apparently pieced together from something Douglas had mentioned.
"I've heard about you, actually. Sandra Whitfield talks about the vet tech who put her husband in his place years back.
Said it was the best thing that ever happened to him socially. "
"That does sound like Sandra."
"She's not wrong, either. Half these men need somebody to put them in their place occasionally.
Keeps the egos from getting too load-bearing.
" Patrice laughed at her own joke, and I laughed too, genuinely, and felt, standing there in the middle of a room full of people who had every reason to look past me and instead seemed perfectly happy to look directly at me, something loosen in my chest that had been tight for months.
I wasn't causing a disaster. I wasn't embarrassing anyone. I was simply being myself, in a deep green dress and gold hoop earrings, talking about architecture and Sandra Whitfield's opinions with total ease, and the room was, by every observable measure, entirely fine with it.
A young reporter covering the launch for the local business journal caught me near the bar a while later, notepad in hand, clearly working the room for color quotes to round out her piece.
"Are you with the Redmond team, or one of tonight's guests?" she asked, pen already poised.
"Neither, exactly. I'm Pierce's wife."
"Oh, wonderful, I'd love a quote if you're willing. What's it like being married to someone building something this size?"
I thought about the question for a moment, genuinely, turning over an honest answer instead of a rehearsed one.
"It's a lot like watching someone chase something they've wanted since before I knew them.
He was working on a much smaller building when we met, an old hardware store nobody else wanted.
This is the same stubbornness, just bigger buildings now. "
"That's a lovely answer." The reporter scribbled it down, thanked me, and moved off toward another cluster of guests, and I stood there a moment, oddly pleased with myself, the specific pleasure of having told the truth plainly to someone who'd actually asked for it, no editing, no careful management, nothing softened for the comfort of the room.
Near the wall of glass overlooking the river, I passed a step-and-repeat backdrop set up for press photos, Redmond Development's logo repeated in careful rows behind a small cluster of framed images on an adjacent display table, renderings of the tower alongside photographs from various stages of construction.
I scanned them, unable to help myself, looking for something specific I already half expected not to find.
It wasn't there. Not a single photograph of Pierce and me, not from the Dunhill, not from the wedding, not from any of the years in between.
Just Pierce, alone or flanked by investors and city officials, in photo after photo after photo, a visual record of a man's career with no trace at all of the marriage that had run alongside it the entire time.
I felt something small and cold settle into place in my chest, confirming what I'd already suspected but hadn't yet seen laid out quite this plainly, an entire wall's worth of evidence that whatever story Redmond Development was telling about its own founder, my part in it had been edited out entirely.
A young associate from the events team was straightening the display table nearby, and I asked her, as casually as I could manage, whether there were other photographs not currently on display, an archive somewhere that hadn't made the final selection.
"There might be a few in storage," she said, checking a binder she was carrying.
"This is mostly what marketing pulled for tonight, all business milestones.
I don't think there's much personal stuff in the archive at all, actually.
I've worked on three of these events now and I don't think I've ever seen a photo of Mr. Redmond that wasn't at a groundbreaking or a ribbon cutting. "
"That's interesting."
"I guess he's just private. Some of these guys are.
" She smiled, entirely unaware of the weight her offhand assessment carried, and returned to straightening the frames, and I stood there a moment longer, absorbing the specific loneliness of being described, by a stranger with no reason to lie, as evidence of a man's privacy rather than evidence of his marriage.
Sandra Whitfield found me there a moment later, resplendent in deep burgundy, her husband trailing a few steps behind deep in conversation with someone else entirely.
"There she is," Sandra said, pulling me into a brief, warm hug that caught me slightly off guard. "I was starting to think you weren't coming. I've been telling everyone about the woman who put my husband in his place nine years ago, and half of them didn't believe such a person existed."
"I exist. Mostly harmless, most days."
"Don't undersell yourself. Harold still brings it up at least twice a year.
" Sandra glanced toward the photo display table I'd just been examining, and something in her expression shifted, subtle but unmistakable.
"This wall's a little sparse on you, isn't it?
I remember there used to be a lovely one from the Dunhill, the two of you laughing near some terrace doors.
I always thought that one was the best photo of Pierce I'd ever seen.
Something about the way he looked at you. "
"I haven't seen that one in a while myself."
"That's a shame. It should be front and center, if you ask me." Sandra squeezed my arm, warm and entirely without agenda, before Harold called her name from across the room. "Come find me later. I want to hear everything you've been up to."
She moved off, and I stood there a moment longer, Sandra's easy, uncomplicated fondness for the missing photograph settling alongside everything else I'd already gathered that evening, another small piece of evidence that nobody in this room had ever needed the photograph gone.
Nobody had needed any of it gone. Pierce had simply decided, alone, that it should be, and I was starting to understand, standing in the middle of a gala full of people who liked me perfectly well exactly as I was, that the decision had never actually belonged to anyone but him.
I was still standing there, absorbing it, when Patrice reappeared at my elbow, Pierce trailing slightly behind her, having apparently extracted himself from his investor conversation to intercept whatever conversation Patrice and I might be having.
"Pierce, there you are," Patrice said, entirely unaware of the small earthquake she was about to set off. "I've been meaning to properly meet your wife all evening. She's wonderful. You didn't tell me she was this sharp."
Pierce's smile was immediate and practiced, the same smile I'd watched him deploy at a dozen events over the years, and for a fraction of a second I let myself hope, one last time, that whatever came next might actually go the way it should have gone from the very beginning.
"She's been holding her own all night, from what I've seen," he said, which wasn't quite an answer, wasn't quite anything at all, a smooth non-statement that could have applied to any woman in the room he happened to be standing near.
"Well, I should let you two catch up," Patrice said, checking her watch. "Councilwoman duties call. Lovely to meet you, Laurel. I mean that."
She moved off toward another cluster of guests, and for a moment Pierce and I stood there together, alone in a way we hadn't been all evening, the noise of the party continuing around us like water around two stones.
"You look beautiful," he said, quiet, and I could hear something genuine underneath it, some real feeling that hadn't entirely been managed out of him yet. "The green dress. I haven't seen it in a while."
"I remembered you liked it."
"I love it. I loved it the first time I saw it." He reached out, briefly, and touched my hand, and I let him, though I didn't move any closer. "Laurel, I saw you when you came in. I know my face did something I'm not proud of."
"I saw it too."
"I don't have a good explanation. I wasn't expecting you, and I think I panicked for a second, and it showed before I could stop it.
" He looked at me with an expression that might have been genuine remorse, or might have simply been the practiced version of remorse he'd learned worked well in difficult conversations, and I found, standing there, that I could no longer easily tell the difference between the two. "I'm glad you're here. I mean that."
"Are you? Genuinely?"
"Genuinely. I've thought about this exact moment more than I want to admit, imagining what it would feel like if you actually walked into one of these rooms without me managing the details first. I didn't expect it to happen tonight, and I definitely didn't expect my own face to betray me the second it did, but underneath the panic, yes.
I'm glad." He said it plainly, without the polish I'd half expected, and something in the plainness of it struck harder than a more practiced version might have.
"We'll see," I said, echoing, without entirely meaning to, the same noncommittal phrase he'd once used on me about the mixer, months earlier, and watched something flicker across his face at the recognition of it.
Before either of us could say anything further, a man in an expensive gray suit approached, someone I didn't recognize, though his easy confidence suggested he was important enough that Pierce straightened slightly at his approach.
"Redmond. Incredible turnout tonight. Congratulations." The man extended a hand, and Pierce shook it warmly, the practiced warmth of a man greeting someone whose opinion mattered considerably to his future. "And who's this?"
The question hung there in the air between the three of us, ordinary and simple, exactly the sort of question that got asked a hundred times a night at an event like this one, and I watched Pierce's face as he processed it, watched the fraction of a second where something like calculation crossed his features before he answered at all.