Chapter 7

Back in the room, Julian said nothing more. He walked me to my door, his hand pausing a moment on the handle, then said, "Goodnight." The door closed.

I stood in the hall, looking at his shut door for a long time.

Then I went back, locked up, and turned off the light. The room held only the moonlight outside and the lighthouse's beam, turning round and round in the distance. I sat on the edge of the bed, took out my phone, and opened the front camera.

The frame was empty. Only the wall behind me, the pillow beside me. No me.

I set the phone down and looked up at the mirror on the vanity. A woman was plainly reflected in it. I could see myself in a mirror, and still I couldn't leave behind a single proper photo for a funeral.

On some impulse I tapped into Julian's profile. His pinned banner photo was still the photo of us taken at Acadia. I was in an orange windbreaker, my hair blown across my face. He stood beside me, head tilted toward me, a smile at the corner of his mouth.

Three years. He had never changed it.

I scrolled down a screen. It was all him and Vivienne. Red carpets, film sets, late-night restaurants. Every one captioned. The string that had just loosened pulled taut again. He kept that banner photo probably only because he couldn't be bothered to change it. The name he truly held in his heart, updated one post at a time, was someone else's.

I turned the phone face-down on the bed and lay in the dark for a long time.

At the first hint of dawn, I got up, washed, changed into a clean sweater. Then I went to knock on his door.

Three knocks, no answer. Three more.

The door opened. Julian stood there, bleary, hair like a bird's nest. He looked at me, and his expression shifted from drowsy to irritated.

"Eleanor, you only ever care about your own pleasure and never think about how others feel, don't you??"

I froze. Only ever cared about my own pleasure and never thought about how others felt. So that was how he saw me.

"I just wanted to get to the lighthouse early," I said.

He didn't snap back, only stepped aside. "Come in first, let me wash up."

I went in and sat on the sofa in his room. His silver case lay open against the corner, its contents spread across the floor. The inner pocket's zipper wasn't fully closed, a corner of paper showing. I reached over and pulled it out.

A stack of photographs.

All of Vivienne Cole. Dressing room, film set, hotel balcony. The composition, the light, the angle, every one of them carrying a familiar tenderness, the kind you could only capture after studying someone carefully.

That was the way of shooting I had taught him, hand over hand.

The bathroom door opened. Julian came out in a clean dark-blue sweater. He saw the photos in my hand, and his gaze didn't flinch.

"I took them," he said. "Using the method you taught me."

I looked at him. Absurd. Laughable. Absurd and laughable both. I had taught him how to make a person look beautiful. And he had taken that skill and used it to photograph another woman.

I slapped the stack down on the table.

"Guess I taught you well," I said.

He didn't answer. He came over and gathered the photos, squared them one by one, and slid them into the side pocket of the case. Then he lifted his head and looked at me.

"You're jealous."

I said nothing.

He suddenly let go of that little edge in his voice, and his tone softened.

"Eleanor. After we get back from the north, let's talk. Really talk, once. Everything from these years, from start to finish, laid out clearly."

Tears stung my eyes unexpectedly. Really talk, once. Those words, I had waited three years for.

Then I remembered. I was already dead. Even if I went back, I couldn't go back. This time it wasn't that he didn't want me. It was that I had no after.

I pushed the heat back down.

"Mm. All right."

We set out again, the G550 rolling out of the inn's gravel lot, onto the main street, heading toward the lighthouse.

Julian suddenly spoke.

"This trip's almost over too. You don't have anything you want to say?"

He was asking me. Was he also waiting for me to speak first? Waiting for me to say, let's not get divorced?

I almost let that flicker of hope carry me into it. But I only asked one thing.

"From the day my family fell apart, did you ever regret marrying me?"

The car went quiet.

He was silent for a very long time.

"What I regret is not vetting your family's books before the wedding. Everything collapsed so quickly that I thought a good deal had run into major complications."

His voice was flat.

My chest felt like a fist had closed around it. A good deal. A misjudgment. So in his eyes this marriage had been a transaction from beginning to end.

The car stopped. The lighthouse.

The boardwalk stretched out into the fog, the white tower with its red top at the end of it. The sea was very still, the fog thick.

Julian didn't cut the engine. He turned his head and looked at me, lifted his chin toward the windshield.

"Go look for yourself."

He didn't get out. Even the last stretch, he couldn't be bothered to walk with me.

I pulled the door open and stepped out. I walked the boardwalk toward the lighthouse.

When I reached the end, the eastern horizon split open. Gold-red light poured out and spread across the whole face of the sea.

I pressed my palms together at my forehead.

“Let me go smoothly. No snags. Don't let him find out too soon.”

The sunrise lasted only a dozen minutes. I turned and walked back to the car.

Julian was still on his phone. He heard the door open and flipped the phone onto his thigh.

"Done looking?"

"Mm."

I took out my phone, opened the thread with the boatman, and forwarded him the lighthouse address. Then I typed a line:

"Tomorrow morning, take the army-green bag from the trunk to this address. Someone will be waiting there."

Tomorrow. When the sun rose again, that bag would be delivered into the old boatman's hands. And before then, I would scatter into the last mist of this world that no one could hold.