Chapter 18: The Night Before

Rachel made it from the lobby to the guest suite without looking at anybody, locked the door, and ran the cold tap until her wrists ached.

She splashed her face. Then she stood there gripping the marble with both hands while her knees did whatever they wanted, and she didn’t look in the mirror, because she knew what she’d see.

Somebody knocked. Two soft knocks, then nothing. Julian’s knock. She’d know it in her sleep by now.

“I’m fine,” she called. Her voice sounded like someone else’s, someone on a phone call from very far away. “Headache. Give me an hour.”

He waited long enough that she knew he didn’t believe her. Then his footsteps went away down the hall, and she hated how much she wanted them to come back.

She sat down on the window seat with her knees pulled up and her back against the cold glass.

Does your billionaire know.

Michael had told her. Of course he had. He’d gone home to Linden Court and climbed into Rachel’s bed with Rachel’s sheets and told his girlfriend about it, the night before, like a joke. Like a story about a waitress he’d stiffed.

Rachel pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes until she saw colors.

* * *

October 14 had been a Wednesday. She remembered because Wednesday was chicken cutlets.

She’d come home from the penthouse on the 6:52. Michael was already there, which never happened. He’d lit candles. Actual candles, the expensive fig ones from the Scarsdale gift shop that she only lit on Christmas Eve, and he’d ordered Thai from the place on Garth Road, her order, pad see ew with extra broccoli, which he’d never once in eleven years remembered on his own.

He’d poured her a glass of wine. He’d rubbed her shoulders while she ate.

I know things have been off, babe. I know I’ve been distant. Work’s been insane. I just want one night. One last night to make things right.

She’d been tired. She’d said so. She’d said she had to be in the city by eight, she had a bleach headache, she wanted a shower and her bed.

He’d kissed her neck anyway. He’d said come on in that voice, the soft one, the one with the hurt in it, like she was the one being cold. Like she was the one who’d been distant. He’d said don’t you love me anymore and I’m trying here, Rach and please, and every time she moved away he moved closer and every no she gave him he just waited out, smiling, patient, like a man waiting for a light to change.

It was easier to stop saying no.

That was the whole truth of it, and she’d never say it out loud to anybody. It was just easier. Easier than another fight at eleven o’clock on a work night. Easier than lying there with him sulking next to her in the dark. She’d closed her eyes and kept the peace like she’d been keeping it for years, and in the morning he’d kissed her forehead and said love you, babe, take the early train, I’ll handle dinner.

He’d handled it.

* * *

Tessa showed up at five with a pizza from Patsy’s, her nail kit in a pink tackle box, and the expression of a woman who’d gotten a text that said come over pls with no emoji.

She took one look at Rachel’s face and put the pizza on the bed.

“Hand,” she said.

“I don’t want my nails done.”

“Nobody asked what you wanted. Your left thumb’s been chipped since before I left for Tampa and it’s disrespectful to me personally. Hand.”

Rachel gave her the hand. And while Tessa pushed back her cuticles with an orange stick and filed every nail into a soft square, Rachel told her. All of it. The candles. The Thai food. The please. She told it to her own fingers because she couldn’t tell it to Tessa’s face.

Tessa didn’t say anything for a long time. Her file went scritch, scritch, scritch. Then she put it down.

“I’m gonna burn Scarsdale down,” she said conversationally. “The whole town. Starting with the Pilates place.”

“Tess.”

“No, I’m serious. I got a cousin in Hunts Point knows a guy. I’ll start with Linden Court and work my way out to the Starbucks.” She picked up the file again. Her hand was shaking. Tessa’s hands never shook. That was her whole job. “That wasn’t okay, Rach. You know that, right? You said you were tired. You said no. That’s not making things right. That’s a guy getting what he wants and calling it romance.”

Rachel watched the nail file. She didn’t trust herself to nod.

“Why that night?” Tessa said. “That’s what I don’t get. He’s got the girlfriend, he’s got the kid, he’s already got the locksmith on speed dial. Why bother? Why candles?”

And Rachel saw it. Just like that, like a light coming on in a room she’d been sitting in for weeks.

The closet.

That night, when she’d gone up to change, his half of their walk-in had been half empty. The good suits gone, the Brooks Brothers and the Hugo Boss, a row of bare wooden hangers swinging. She’d asked. He’d been right behind her, already unbuttoning her blouse.

Dry cleaner, babe. Big batch. Don’t worry about it.

She hadn’t worried about it. She’d been too busy being kissed.

“He’d already moved his stuff,” Rachel said slowly. “His side was empty. He took his things out first so the movers wouldn’t throw them on the lawn with mine. He had the locksmith coming at nine. He knew exactly how the next day was going to go, Tess, and he didn’t want me opening any drawers or asking any questions or calling anybody. So he kept me busy.” She had to stop and swallow. “The candles were so I wouldn’t look in the closet.”

Tessa set the file down very carefully on the duvet. Her mouth was tight.

“Okay,” she said. “Then I need to ask you something, and you’re gonna hate me. Did he use anything?”

“We stopped bothering years ago. After the fertility doctor, what was the point?”

Tessa didn’t smile. She took Rachel’s freshly filed hand in both of hers and held it.

“Rach. When was your last period?”

Rachel opened her mouth to answer and didn’t have one.

She tried to count. September sometime. Before the lockout, before all of it. Her cycle had always been a mess, since she was fourteen, forty days, fifty days, once three months straight with nothing and a doctor who shrugged and said stress. She’d never kept track. She’d never had to.

“It’s always been irregular,” she said. “You know that. It’s stress. It’s living under a bridge, Tess. That’s all it is.”

Tessa didn’t let go of her hand.

“Okay,” Tessa said. But she said it the way Julian said fair.

And somewhere behind Rachel’s ribs, without asking her permission, the part of her brain that loved numbers started counting backward from the candles.