Chapter 2 - The Woman I Had Stopped Seeing
Eleven years earlier, Elena had carried our wedding flowers home on the train because she refused to spend money on a car.
“We can afford dinner or transportation,” she had said. “I’m choosing dinner.”
I had loved that about her.
Or I had loved it when her practicality benefited me.
We started married life in an apartment above a bakery. In winter, the windows rattled. In summer, the kitchen smelled like yeast and strawberries.
Elena worked for an architecture practice.
I worked for a property advisory firm called Harrow & Pike.
We were young enough to believe exhaustion meant progress.
When I earned my first promotion, she surprised me with a secondhand leather briefcase she had restored herself.
When she earned hers, I missed the dinner.
A client meeting had run late.
That was the beginning of a pattern I eventually stopped noticing.
She celebrated me.
I rescheduled her.
Northline began at our kitchen table after Elena left a position that paid well and hollowed her out.
She wanted to design buildings people could actually use.
Libraries with accessible entrances.
Community kitchens with space for wheelchairs.
After-school centers where children could see daylight.
I called it admirable.
Then I asked when it would become profitable.
She never forgot that question.
I knew because, years later, she stopped answering it.
At the restaurant, Simone asked the server for another napkin.
I watched her dab champagne from her sleeve.
“Why did you say no when you saw Elena’s picture?”
“I said it because this is ridiculous.”
“You looked like you recognized something.”
“Marcus, your ex-wife just hijacked our afternoon.”
My ex-wife had not contacted me.
She had made a public announcement about work she had apparently been doing while I lied about mine.
I stood.
“Where are you going?”
“To get some air.”
“You’re leaving me here?”
“I need twenty minutes.”
She laughed sharply.
“Of course. Suddenly she has money, and now you need time to think.”
The accusation landed because it contained enough truth to hurt.
Would I have been this shaken if Elena had announced a modest grant instead of an acquisition?
I wanted to say yes.
I did not trust myself.
Outside, the wind came off the river with teeth.
I opened the article again.
There were photographs of Northline’s staff.
Nine people.
I recognized only two.
There was a quote from Elena about restoring buildings without displacing the communities that used them.
There was another from Miriam Vale.
Elena sees value where others have trained themselves to see only cost.
I remembered saying something similar to Simone about Elena.
She makes everything harder than it needs to be.
At the time, Simone had laughed.
I had felt understood.
Now I wondered whether I had simply found someone willing to applaud my worst interpretation.
My sister called.
“Please tell me you didn’t ask whether you can get part of her company.”
“I didn’t.”
“Good.”
“Did you know?”
“About the partnership? A little.”
“Everybody knew except me?”
“Marcus, she stopped inviting you into her life after you stopped showing up.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Neither was what you did.”
I watched a water taxi pass beneath the bridge.
My sister softened her voice.
“I’m not calling to punish you. Mom’s upset. Elena asked us not to make today about the divorce.”
“Then why text me?”
“Because we thought you should hear it from family before you said something stupid publicly.”
I almost smiled.
Almost.
When I returned to the restaurant, Simone was standing beside the table with her coat on.
“We need to talk somewhere private.”
“About what?”
She glanced around before answering.
“About how Elena knows Miriam Vale.”
May you like
For the first time all day, I heard fear beneath her anger.
And it had nothing to do with losing me.
