5. What He Shouldn't Know

Claire set her portfolio on the preparation table beside the anniversary ballroom and checked the time.

Five minutes. That was what she had agreed to give Damian, and she intended to keep the rest of the evening for work.

He was waiting beyond the glass doors, his coat still on, his hands empty. She noticed that first. No roses, no expensive box offered as an answer to an argument. She disliked herself a little for feeling relieved.

“Five minutes,” she said as he entered.

“I know.”

“You've already used eight seconds.”

A line appeared beside his mouth. Not quite a smile. It vanished when he saw the drawings spread across the table.

“I remember this proposal,” he said.

“Do you?”

“You showed me a version after our wedding.”

“I showed you three. You asked whether I could move the client meeting because Cass needed help.”

His gaze dropped to the plan. “I was wrong.”

Claire remembered the evenings she had waited for precisely those words. She had pictured herself forgiving him on the spot, too relieved to ask what would change afterward. Now she had heard them and felt no such relief. The admission had arrived in a life she wasn't even sure she understood.

“You don't get to make that sound easy.”

“It wasn't easy for you.”

“That isn't what I meant.” She pressed a hand to the edge of the table. “I spent years believing that if I explained myself better, you might understand why it hurt. And now you arrive with one sentence, as if you can put it between us and close the account.”

“I don't expect you to close it.”

“Then what do you expect?”

He hesitated, and the hesitation was familiar in a way his quick apology had not been.

“I need to tell you something about the night you left,” he said.

Claire went still.

In the first life, the night she moved out had happened long after this date. They had argued in the study. She had dragged a suitcase from their bedroom to the hall. Damian had stood by the desk and asked whether they could discuss it after Cass's benefit dinner.

She remembered putting the suitcase down outside his study, just for a moment, because her hand hurt from holding it.

No one in this life could know that.

“What night?” she asked.

“The night you moved out.”

“We're living in the same house.”

“I know where we are.”

Claire took a step back. She was suddenly aware of every sound outside the room: shoes moving over marble, a cart rattling down a corridor, the distant opening of the elevator. The world remained stubbornly ordinary while something impossible entered it.

“Damian, stop.”

He stopped speaking. He did not move closer.

A terrifying hope pricked at her, followed by anger that she could still hope anything from him.

“Are you guessing?” she asked. “Did I say something in my sleep? Are you trying to frighten me into staying?”

“No.”

“Then be precise.”

Her gaze caught the clock above the service door. More than five minutes had passed. She could end this. Instead Claire set the portfolio down. “I'm choosing to keep listening because you know something you shouldn't. Don't mistake that for forgiveness.” Damian did not move toward her. “I won't.”

He looked toward the closed door, then back at her. “In the life I remember, you left me after months of trying to make me listen. You put your suitcase outside my study. I heard the wheels stop, and I waited for you to come back.”

Her breath caught. He had not seen the suitcase stop. He could have heard it. That was not enough. Her mind scrambled for other explanations, any explanation that would leave her alone with her miracle rather than forced to share it with the man who had broken her heart.

“And did I?”

“No.”

“Convenient answer.”

He accepted the insult without defending himself.

Claire leaned against the table. She wanted to scream at him. She wanted to ask whether he had finally cared after she was gone. Worse, she wanted him to say he had.

The private preparation room had tall windows and a long service table scarred by years of mounting materials. Claire had chosen it because nobody there expected her to be gracious. She could lay drawings across the wood without asking whether a donor would be offended by the mess.

Now Damian occupied the same room in which she had hoped to feel like herself again.

“Did you come here to tell me we'd get another chance?” she asked.

“No.”

“Then why come?”

“I knew you would be asked to give up the appointment. I wanted you to know I wouldn't support that request.”

“You could have told Miriam and left.”

“Yes.”

“And you wanted to talk anyway.”

His mouth tightened. “Yes.”

She turned a sheet of tracing paper so the printed design faced away from him. It was a small defensive motion, and she resented that she needed it.

“You remember when we first met?” she asked suddenly.

“At the Bennett charity exhibition. You told me I was standing in front of the best piece.”

“Because you were.” Claire almost smiled. “You moved. You asked what I thought about the work. Not about the people who owned it.”

“I remember.”

“I fell in love with that man. I spent a long time trying to find him again while you kept telling me how fortunate I was.”

He looked at the drawing between them. He made no claim to having remained that man.

“I don't know how to stand in a room with you and not hope you'll listen,” Claire admitted. “That doesn't mean you can use my hope. I won't let you.”

“I understand.”

“I don't think you do yet.”

The room seemed very quiet. Claire heard a cleaning cart rattle across the distant hall and remembered lying in the wrecked car, waiting for a voice that had never reached her before the darkness.

She couldn't bear a beautiful vague declaration. If Damian was lying, precision might expose him. If he wasn't, precision would change everything.

“Tell me one thing,” she said. “A fact you couldn't possibly have learned this morning. Not a feeling. Not a speech about regret.” Her voice was shaking now, but she kept her gaze on his face.

She remembered how their arguments had once ended. Damian would call her reasonable, thank her for understanding, and offer a dinner reservation as though the matter were settled. She would say she was fine because she wanted to be loved more than she wanted to be right. The memory made her voice sharpen now. She would rather have him walk away than accept another elegant answer that concealed the same choice.

His fingers tightened briefly around the edge of his coat. When he spoke, his voice was low enough that she had to be still to hear it.

“I thought that if I found you, I could tell you I was sorry.”

Claire's skin went cold.

“Found me where?”

He did not answer at once.

“Where, Damian?”

Outside, a door clicked shut. Claire's hand lay on the portfolio, but she could no longer feel the leather beneath it.

She saw the rain again. The impossible glare of oncoming headlights. Her wedding ring in her palm. The driver turning toward her with an expression she had not had time to understand.

Damian looked at her as if he could see the exact instant she remembered.

“I held you after you stopped answering me,” he said. “It was raining on our fourth anniversary.”

The portfolio slipped from Claire's hand and struck the floor.

She had never told him she died.