Chapter One

The Weight of normal.

The eggs were getting cold.

I knew this because I had been standing at the kitchen counter in our house on East 73rd Street for four minutes listening to the city wake up outside the window. I was wondering what kind of woman I had become, cooking breakfast for a man who was never going to sit down and eat it.

I slid the plate to the side anyway.

 Then I heard Damien’s voice from the hallway, sharp and clipped like it always is in the morning before nine. He was on the phone. He was always on the phone.

"I don't care what Chen's team projected; those numbers don't account for the Seoul restructure push the call to Thursday," he said. There was a pause. "No, Thursday, not Friday. There is a difference."

Damien walked into the kitchen already dressed and ready to go. He barely glanced at the plate. He did not even look at me.

"Fine, send it over before noon, and I'll look at it on the way," he said. He lowered the phone. Dropped it into his breast pocket. Then he reached past me for the coffee.

"Morning," I said.

"Morning," he replied, standing there to drink his coffee. I waited for something, but there was nothing else.

"I made eggs, " I said.

He glanced at the plate like he was seeing it for the first time, which he probably was. "I have a meeting by seven thirty," he said.

"It's six fifty-two," I replied.

"Traffic," he said. I nodded. I stopped asking about traffic eight months ago because we both knew it wasn't about traffic.

"Tonight," I asked.

He was already back on his phone. "What about it?" he said.

I thought we could actually have dinner, a dinner at the... I stopped. Then I started again.

"Elena has had that reservation holding since March," I said.

The pause was half a second, but I felt it.

"I have the Harley acquisition review at least until nine, ten," he said.

"It's Thursday, Damien," I said.

"I know what day it is," he replied.

"Our anniversary is on Saturday," I said.

Something shifted in his expression. It wasn't guilt exactly, more like he was recalibrating. It was the look he had when his meeting had gone sideways, and he needed to manage the fallout.

"I will make it up to you," he said. "This deal closes by the end of the month, and then I'm..."

"You said that about the Monaco deal, " I said, setting my coffee down. "The Henderson merger and now the..." I pressed my lips together. "Never mind."

"Aria," he said.

"It's fine, " I said, picking up my coffee. "You will be late."

He looked at me, really looked at me for the first time this morning. For a second, I saw something on his face that I used to know something that looked almost like the man I married three years ago in a rooftop garden in Tribeca while it rained so hard we were soaked, but neither of us cared.

Then his phone buzzed.

"I'll try to be home by ten," he said.

"Okay," I replied.

He set his cup down, straightened his jacket, and left. The front door closed with a click, the kind of sound that did not slam. That was the thing about this house. Nothing in it was ever loud enough for what I was feeling.

I stood in the kitchen for a time. I ate the eggs alone. They were already cold and rubbery. I ate every one of them standing at the counter because sitting at the dining table all by myself felt like a defeat I wasn't ready to name.

When I was done, I washed the plate, dried it, and put it where it belonged.

Then I pulled out my sketchbook, the one with the coffee ring cover that Damien never once asked about. I sat on the kitchen floor with my back against the counter, and I drew interiors. Rooms that felt like something spaces filled with warmth, built into the walls, lights coming in from the angle, furniture that looked like it had been chosen by someone who actually lived there.

I used to do this every morning before I got married, before I packed my drafting pencils into a box and told myself there would be time for it later. Later had not come yet.

My phone buzzed on the counter above me. I reached up without looking.

 Mara’s name lit the screen.

"Tell me something," I said instead of hello.

"I burnt my toast and my landlord is raising my rent," she said. "Your turn."

“he forgot our anniversary dinner. Again”

“aria”

“he didn’t forget exactly, he just prioritize it differently.

“that’s the saddest sentence I have heard you say” her voice was low and soft.

“I made eggs”

“how were they?” she asked

“cold”

 she was quiet for a second “do you want me to come over?”

"No. I'm fine."

"You always say that."

"And I'm always fine."

"One day those two things are going to stop being true at the same time," she said. "I'm just saying."

I looked around the immaculate kitchen, the coffee that Damien left in the sink, the open sketchbook on my lap, the ten-million-dollar house that never felt like a home.

"I drew something this morning," I said.

There was a beat of silence, and softly, because Mara always knew when to be quiet, "Was it good?"

I looked down at the page, a living room with warm light, a window seat with too many pillows, the kind of place a person would want to disappear into and actually want to.

"Yeah," I said. "It was good."

I almost believed it.