Chapter 4 - The Story He Told First
By midnight, half the party had left.
The other half pretended they were leaving because it was late.
I went upstairs to pack a bag.
Not because Adrian asked me to.
Because I needed somewhere else to breathe.
We had never officially combined households, though I'd spent four nights a week at his house for the last year. My clothes had colonized one side of the primary closet. My shampoo sat in the shower. A framed photograph from our engagement party stood on the dresser.
I took none of it.
I packed underwear, jeans, two sweaters, my laptop charger, and the old gray T-shirt I slept in when I was too tired to care whether it looked like a car-wash rag.
Halfway through, my phone started buzzing.
First my friend Megan.
Then Nate Patel, Blackwood Restoration's finance director.
Then three employees.
Then my sister.
I answered Nate.
"What happened?"
He exhaled.
"I was about to ask you the same thing."
"Why?"
"Adrian sent an email."
My hand stopped on the zipper.
"To who?"
"Everybody."
I closed my eyes.
"Read it."
Nate hesitated.
"Evelyn-"
"Read it."
He did.
Adrian's message was calm, polished, and devastating.
It said I'd returned unexpectedly from a stressful trip and "misinterpreted private financial matters." It said a family heirloom had been removed from his safe without permission. It said rumors about the company's solvency were false. It asked employees to respect "a painful personal situation" and direct all questions to him.
He never called me unstable.
He didn't have to.
The words stressful trip and painful personal situation did the work for him.
"He sent that fourteen minutes ago," Nate said.
I sat on the edge of the bed.
"Did he tell you the company has nine days of cash?"
Silence.
"Nate?"
"No."
"Did you know?"
Another silence.
Longer.
"I knew we were tight. Not nine days."
"What about Alder House?"
He made a small sound.
"What about it?"
"Do you know it's being sold Monday?"
"I knew there was a real-estate transaction. Adrian said it was non-core property."
"It doesn't belong to him."
"Evelyn..."
"It belongs to his ex-wife. The one he told me was dead. She's downstairs."
Nothing.
Then Nate said, "I have a six-year-old and a mortgage."
The sentence seemed unrelated.
It wasn't.
"I know."
"I'm not saying I don't believe you. I'm saying I cannot be the person who blows up payroll based on something I heard at midnight."
It stung.
It also made sense.
Nate had worked there for eight years.
He wasn't my soldier.
He was a man with a kid who had braces scheduled in January and a wife who had gone back to school.
"I'm not asking you to blow up anything," I said.
"What are you asking?"
I looked at the closed bedroom door.
"Tell me if my signature is on anything else."
He inhaled slowly.
"That could get me fired."
"I know."
"Let me think."
He hung up.
I was still holding the phone when Adrian walked in.
He had removed the vampire cape.
Without it, he looked tired rather than theatrical.
"You didn't have to call Nate," he said.
"You didn't have to email sixty-three people before I finished packing."
"I had to protect the company."
"From me?"
"From panic."
I stood.
"You are very good at renaming things."
His jaw tightened.
"And you're very good at making decisions when you're furious."
"Which decision are we talking about? Coming home? Getting my ring appraised? Refusing to let you mortgage my condo?"
"The ring is mine."
"Elise says otherwise."
"Elise says a lot of things."
"So do you."
He looked at my bag.
"Where are you going?"
"Megan's."
"Stay."
The word surprised me.
Not because it was tender.
Because it sounded practical.
Like asking me not to cancel a reservation.
"Why?"
He looked away.
"Because if you walk out tonight, everything becomes harder tomorrow."
There it was.
Not I love you.
Not I'm sorry.
Harder tomorrow.
"For who?"
He rubbed the back of his neck.
"For everyone."
I lifted the suitcase.
"That's not an answer."
He stepped in front of the door.
Not touching me.
Just standing there.
For a second I saw what Elise had meant.
Deciding where everyone was allowed to stand.
"Move."
"Evelyn, if you go out there with Elise and Celeste, this becomes gossip by sunrise. We can sit down with attorneys in the morning and sort out the property, the loan, the marriage-"
I stared at him.
"The marriage?"
He flinched.
"Celeste and I were separating."
From the hallway, Celeste said, "That's interesting."
She stood barefoot on the runner, red dress gathered in one fist, black heels hanging from the other.
Adrian closed his eyes.
"Celeste."
"When exactly were we separating? Before or after we had sex yesterday morning?"
I looked at the ceiling.
There are moments when pain becomes so ridiculous that your body rejects drama and gives you fatigue instead.
This was one of them.
Adrian moved away from the door.
"I can't do this right now."
Celeste laughed.
"You built this room."
Then she looked at me.
"He needs something from you Monday."
Adrian went still.
"Don't."
Celeste ignored him.
"The lender won't fund on the house alone. They need the personal guarantee. He told me you already signed."
I tightened my grip on the suitcase.
"I didn't."
"I know that now."
Adrian said, "Celeste, you're making this worse."
She looked at him with an expression that was almost calm.
"No. I'm making it visible."
Then she turned to me.
"If you want to know what he really planned to do Monday, meet me tomorrow morning. Alone."
Adrian's face changed.
May you like
And that was the first time all night I saw him genuinely afraid of someone other than the bank.
