Chapter 24
The bag was on the bed by seven-fifty. A weekend bag, soft-sided, the one she'd bought in Milan years ago. In it were two changes of clothes, a second pair of shoes, and a toiletry kit. Her laptop went on top.
The plant was still on the kitchen windowsill.
A pothos in a clay pot, the leaves variegated green and cream, the vines just long enough to start trailing down the edge of the sill.
She had bought it the Saturday after her mother left, walking past a flower shop downtown.
The woman behind the counter had told her pothos were difficult to kill.
She picked up the pot. The clay was warm where the sun had been on it. She picked up the bag with her right hand and the plant with her left and went to the door.
In the elevator she set the plant on the rail and watched the floor numbers descend. Twenty-nine. Twenty-two. Fifteen.
Outside, the air was cold and smelled like wet cement. She set the plant on the passenger seat and braced it with the bag so it would not tip on the turns. She turned onto the road at eight-twenty.
The Vaughn Industries lobby was full of morning light and people moving through it with coffee cups.
Marcela at the front desk recognized her, took half a second to register the difference, and then asked her to sign in.
Simone signed in, and she handed her a visitor's badge on a lanyard.
Simone clipped it to her lapel and rode the elevator up.
Helen was at her desk. She stood when the elevator opened. “Ms. Rousseau.”
“Hi, Helen.”
“They're in the conference room. Ruth has the documents. Alexandra is on a call but she'll be in by ten.”
“Thank you.”
Helen had a clipboard against her hip and the same composed expression she had worn every time Simone had passed her, but she stood a half-step closer than usual and said, evenly, “Welcome.” Then she turned back to her desk.
Simone walked down the corridor. The conference room door was open.
Ruth was at the head of the table with two associates and a stack of bound folders, and she nodded at Simone.
Simone took the chair on the long side of the table and set her phone face-down beside her water glass.
She wrapped her hand around her water glass; it was cold and sent a shock through her system.
Ruth said something quiet to one of the associates, and the associate left the room. Across from Simone, the other associate was reading the document in front of her. Outside the windows, a gull cut a slow line across the harbor and disappeared behind the glass of the next building.
Alexandra came in at nine-fifty-eight. She was wearing a dark gray pantsuit, and her hair was pulled back in a loose bun. On her way to her seat, she glanced at Simone, a brief acknowledgment, and Simone felt it in her chest.
“All set?” Alexandra asked the room.
“All set,” Ruth said.
Meg came in then with the final draft of the release in her hand.
She set a copy in front of Alexandra and a copy in front of Simone.
Simone had read this document four times already in the last forty-eight hours—first with Audrey, then with the Rousseau Global lawyers, then with Alexandra on the phone Wednesday night.
They had written it together. Re-reading it now, she found nothing to change.
She looked up to see Alexandra already looking up at her. “Ready.”
“Ready,” Alexandra agreed.
Meg took both copies and went out. Minutes later, Simone heard phones begin to ring down the corridor.
Simone's phone buzzed face-down on the table, but she did not turn it over yet.
She watched as Alexandra picked up her own phone and read something on it, her profile very still, the light from the window catching the line of her jaw and the silver at her temple.
Simone finally turned over her phone. Audrey had already sent three messages from London: a confirmation that the Rousseau Global side had gone out at the same time, the European market reaction, and one line: Well done. Talk Monday.
Simone put the phone face-down again. More calls came in. Simone and Alexandra worked through the morning, and the room emptied around them in stages. By one, only she and Alexandra were left. Alexandra stood at the window with her phone against her ear, and Simone closed her laptop and looked up.
Alexandra finished the call. She set the phone on the windowsill and stayed there for a moment with her back to the room.
“Long morning,” Simone said.
Alexandra turned. The composure she had worn for the conference room loosened just at the edges. “Yes.”
She crossed back to the table and stopped beside Simone's chair. She did not sit. She put one hand flat on the table next to Simone's laptop, close enough that her little finger touched the edge of Simone's sleeve, and she stood there for a moment looking down at her.
“All right?” Alexandra asked.
“Yeah, I’m all right.”
Alexandra's hand stayed where it was. Simone reached over and covered it with her own. “I'll see you at the house,” Simone said.
She drove up the hill at five-twenty. The sun had already dipped below the western ridge, the road wet and shining from the light shower earlier.
When she arrived, the gate at the estate was already open, so she pulled into the driveway and parked next to Alexandra’s car and sat there for a moment with her hands on the wheel.
She had been here many times. She had been here for dinners, for nights, for the early mornings when she left before Alexandra woke. She had been here as a woman who was always about to leave. She picked up the bag and the plant and got out of the car.
Alexandra opened the door before Simone reached it. She had changed out of her pantsuit and was now in jeans and a soft crimson sweater, her hair down, and barefoot. She looked at Simone holding the plant and the bag.
“Come in,” Alexandra said.
Simone stepped inside. The house smelled like something was cooking—onions, garlic, the slow start of a meal. Alexandra closed the door behind her and reached for the bag without asking. Simone let her take it.
“Where would you like this?” Simone asked, still holding the plant.
“The kitchen, I think. The window ledge over the sink.”
Simone carried the plant down the hallway, and Alexandra followed her.
The kitchen was warm. She saw a pot on the stove and a glass of red wine on the counter with a paperback novel turned face-down beside it.
Simone set the plant on the windowsill above the sink and stepped back.
She turned the flowerpot a quarter turn so the leaves caught the kitchen light evenly.
“It looks like it belongs there,” Alexandra said.
Simone couldn’t answer her immediately. The sight of the plant in Alexandra’s kitchen was something Simone couldn’t have predicted would make her emotional. She felt it in her sternum first then somewhere behind her eyes.
“Yes,” she finally said. “It does.”
Alexandra lifted the lid off the pot again and stirred. “I made the soup my mother used to make. I hope that's all right. I didn't want to do anything complicated tonight.”
“That’s all right. I bet it’s going to taste amazing.”
“There’s wine open if you want some. I already pulled down a wine glass for you on the island.”
Simone walked around the island and picked up the glass, then poured some wine.
She took one slow swallow. Alexandra was at the stove with her back to her, stirring, and Simone watched her—the line of her shoulders under the soft sweater, the way her hair fell forward when she leaned over the pot, her bare feet on the cold tile that she had not put slippers on for.
“Tess sent me a note this afternoon,” Simone said. “She wanted me to tell you congratulations. She said the morning numbers were the prettiest thing she'd seen in a year.”
Alexandra laughed, a small, surprised laugh that Simone hadn’t heard from her before. “Tess sounds like someone I would like.”
“You’d like her.”
“You’ll have to bring her by sometime.”
The casualness of the line resonated within her in a way she hadn’t braced for. Alexandra was planning for a future. A future Simone would be in. Simone set her glass down on the counter carefully.
“What?” Alexandra asked, glancing back.
“Nothing.”
Alexandra looked at her for a beat longer, then she turned back to the stove. “Come help me. There’s bread in the oven, and I’ve forgotten about it twice already.”
Simone helped her with the bread, then helped ladle the soup in bowls.
They ate at the kitchen island, side by side, on the high stools.
The soup was white beans with celery, carrots, and spinach with a rich broth and Italian spices.
Simone hadn’t eaten anyone’s family recipes in a long time, and she ate slowly to savor every bite.
Alexandra refilled her wine glass without asking and they talked about nothing: Audrey's text from London, the weather, a book Alexandra had been trying to finish for three weeks and could not seem to start over from where she had left off.
Simone listened and watched as Alexandra lifted a piece of bread, set it down again, and picked it up.
She watched the small unselfconscious movements of a woman who was at home in a room and in her body.
She felt a wave of emotion settle in her chest. It had risen in her at the door, when Alexandra had taken the bag from her without asking, and it had risen again when Alexandra said that the plant looked like it belonged in the kitchen, and it had risen a third time when Alexandra said that she should bring Tess by.
She had been suppressing the urge to confess the scope of her love out loud all night, even though she knew, deep in her bones, that she would say it tonight. But not here, not yet.
Alexandra reached over and refilled Simone’s water glass without looking up from her bread, and Simone watched her, the sentence bubbling up inside her again.
“Are you tired?” Alexandra asked.