Chapter 4
Nora POV
When Adrian came back through twenty minutes later in his jacket, ready to go, he found me at the window desk with the calendar open.
He paused in the doorway.
"Are you moving everything today?"
"Only the things that won't be mine next month."
He came close enough to see the screen.
I watched him observe the color-coded rows — the ones I'd tagged to myself, disappearing one by one as I transferred them to Marcus or to the building's concierge or simply deleted them.
His brow tightened for a moment.
"Thursday's still on?" he asked.
"I said I'd be there."
He nodded. He was reaching for his cufflinks, the small dark ones he'd had for years — a deep navy enamel that caught the morning light in a way I'd always noticed without meaning to.
I had never asked where they came from. I had an idea, the kind that assembles itself from peripheral evidence: the color, and the way his first lover Isabelle Laurent had worn blue in every photograph I'd ever seen of her, and the specific, careful quality of memory Adrian had for everything that belonged to those years before the marriage.
He never spoke of her at length, and he had never been unfaithful, and none of that was the point. The point was the difference between his memory of her and his knowledge of me.
I knew every habit of the man standing in front of me. I knew the coffee and the tie and the hand at the small of my back and the exact stillness.
I knew these things because I had loved him for ten years and observing him had become so ordinary it barely registered.
"If you need the car for the shop," he said, fastening the second cuff, "let Marcus know."
"No. I need to learn what my days cost without your name attached to them."
He looked at me. Something shifted in his expression — not hurt, not quite, but the particular quality of attention. "All right," he said. "If that changes, ask."
Then he left, and the apartment was quiet, and I sat with the calendar and continued the work of making myself smaller in a space I'd spent three years learning to occupy.
My best friend, Maya Brooks, called at nine-thirty, video this time, which meant she'd already had coffee and was ready to be direct.
She appeared on my screen in her Haven House office, her hair in the thick braid she wore on program days, a stack of folders on the desk behind her. She took one look at whatever was visible behind me and said, "Did you tell him?"
"I told him I'm busy."
"That isn't what I asked."
"I told him the divorce was in less than a month and I needed to start taking care of my own life." I pulled my cup closer. "He said he understood."
Maya had known me for six years, since the first time I'd walked into Haven House with a volunteer form and a box of leftover cardamom rolls and an absolute terror of being in a room full of children who'd lost the things they'd lost, because I'd been one of them once and I wasn't sure I'd kept it together well enough to be useful.
She'd been an intern then, twenty-one and already the most competent person in the building.
She looked at me now the same way she'd looked at me that first day — with the directness and honesty.
"Do you want distraction or honesty?" she asked.
"Distraction."
She accepted that without comment, which was one of the reasons I loved her.
"Good, because I need a favor. Renata called out — her daughter's sick — and she's the only one certified for the Thursday basics class. Bread. Beginner level. Eight kids, two of them aging out of placement in the spring so they're in life skills track." She tilted her head. "I know you have the Cross dinner that night, but the class is two to four."
"Send me the allergy list and the kitchen inventory," I said.
She typed something, and then paused, her fingers still on the keyboard. "There was a change on the foundation side. The observation slot."
"How much of a change?"
She sent me the file. I opened it, and there was the updated visitor list for Thursday's session, and the name where the Cross Capital Foundation project manager had been listed was now different. It was Adrian's name. Adrian Cross.
I stared at it.
An hour ago I had been removing myself from his calendar. Now his name had appeared in mine — not in the apartment, not at the dinner table, not in any of the spaces that had always belonged to our contract, but here, in the one place that had never had anything to do with being his wife.
"Do you want me to find someone else?" Maya asked. She wasn't pushing. She never pushed.
I thought about the eight kids. The two who were aging out in the spring. The fact that I'd promised, and that the class needed someone who could teach bread.
"No," I said. "I said I'd teach the class."
Maya nodded. She didn't say anything else about it, which was another reason I loved her.
After we hung up, I printed the visitor list and set it beside the allergy sheet and the kitchen inventory, three pages on the counter in front of me.
Adrian's name sat at the top of the first page. In two days he would walk into Haven House knowing it was where his foundation sent money, not knowing it was where I went when I needed to remember who I was before I'd learned to make his coffee.
I touched my wedding ring without meaning to. Then I picked up my pen and began making notes on the lesson plan, and I did not let myself finish the thought that had started forming somewhere underneath the practicalities — what would happen if he found me there.
Then I changed my mind. So what if he found me there.
It was only twenty-nine days left. And twenty-nine days was not enough time for each of us to change anything.
