Chapter 6 — The Rosemary

Dinner is served the way it always is in this house, perfectly arranged, every detail accounted for, the staff disappearing the moment they're no longer needed. It's strange, sitting at this table again. Strange in a way I can't fully name, because nothing about the room has changed and everything about me has.

Alexander sits across from me, watching.

"You should eat," he says.

"I will."

"You're just staring at it."

I pick up my fork without comment. For a few minutes, the only sound is the faint clink of utensils against plates. I let the silence stretch, mostly because I don't trust myself yet to fill it with anything that wouldn't reveal more than I want him to see.

Then Alexander speaks again.

"I told them to remove the rosemary."

My hand stills over the plate.

I look up slowly. "What?"

"From the dish." He nods toward my plate. "You don't like it."

A pause. The words echo strangely in my mind, out of place in a way I can't immediately explain.

"You remember that?" I ask.

He frowns, like the question itself confuses him. "Of course I do."

I study him. The old Alexander never noticed things like that. He never cared enough to. Three years of dinners in this exact room, and I can count on one hand the number of times he looked up from his phone long enough to register what was on my plate, let alone what I did or didn't like about it.

"Right," I say, my voice carefully neutral as I lower my gaze back to my food.

Something shifts in the room. Subtle. Undeniable. I file it away with everything else I'm collecting — small, precise details that don't belong to the man I was married to, worn by a face that does.

"You've gone quiet," he says after a moment.

"I'm thinking."

"About?"

I consider lying. Decide against it, mostly because the truth is safer than whatever fiction I'd have to maintain. "About how much you seem to know for someone who's supposed to be missing five years."

He sets his fork down slowly. For a second, something flickers behind his eyes... not guilt, not quite, but something adjacent to it. Calculation, maybe. Or the particular stillness of someone recalculating what they thought they could get away with saying out loud.

"I remember more than I've let on. I'm not ready to explain why yet."

It's a good answer. Too good, maybe. Smooth in a way that either means it's true, or means he's had time to prepare it.

I don't push further. Not yet. Pushing too hard, too early, only teaches someone what you're paying attention to.

**********

After dinner, there's a brief meeting in the lounge with one of the staff members going over the week's schedule... board calls, a shareholder dinner, logistics I only half listen to because my attention keeps drifting sideways toward Alexander's hands, his posture, the careful way he holds himself like a man still learning the shape of his own life.

"Mr. Hale confirmed the meeting for next week," the staff member says, glancing at a tablet.

Alexander's hand pauses on his glass.

It's brief, a half-second flicker, something sharp passing behind his expression before it smooths back into the same calm, gentle mask he's worn since he woke up in that hospital bed. If I hadn't already started watching for exactly this kind of thing, I would have missed it entirely.

"Reschedule it," he says easily. "I'm not ready to deal with that yet."

"Of course, sir."

The moment passes. The staff member nods and moves on to the next item on the schedule, and Alexander's expression stays exactly as composed as it was a minute ago, like nothing happened at all.

But something did.

I don't know who Mr. Hale is yet. I don't know why the name made Alexander's hand tighten around a glass of water like it belonged to a different conversation entirely. What I do know is that a man who supposedly can't remember the last five years of his life just reacted to a name from within them like it meant something very specific and very unwelcome.

I add it to the list.

******

My room is exactly where I left it, clean, unused, waiting. I close the door behind me and lean against it for a second, eyes sliding shut as I exhale slowly. The silence here feels different from the rest of the house. Less heavy. More contained.

I move to the desk and sit, pulling the tablet Victoria gave me out of my bag.

The reports are worse than I remembered. Numbers don't lie, and these are telling a very clear story,..losses, delays, inconsistencies that shouldn't exist in a company this size. I scroll slowly, cross-referencing figures against dates, letting the shape of the problem come into focus one line at a time.

"Someone's bleeding you," I murmured to no one.

My phone lights up on the desk. I glance at it absently, expecting nothing important.

"Unknown sender."

A new message.

My stomach tightens slightly as I open it.

"We need to talk."

My jaw sets. I don't need to guess who it is. Another message appears before I can decide whether to respond.

"I can prove he's lying."

I go very still. My eyes flick over the words again, then down to the sender. No name, but the number is familiar in a way I wish it weren't.

Leo.

My grip tightens around the phone. A long second passes. Then another.

My thumb hovers over the screen. Finally, I open the full message.

"Don't trust the man who remembers everything."

The room feels colder than it did a minute ago. I lean back slowly in my chair, my gaze fixed on the screen as the words settle into something heavy and difficult to ignore.

I think about the rosemary. About the flicker in Alexander's expression at the mention of a name I don't recognize yet. About Victoria's careful, unbothered certainty in that hospital lounge, like she already knew every move I was going to make before I made it.

Outside, the house is quiet.

Inside, something shifts.

And for the first time since I agreed to come back

Doubt creeps in, and it doesn't feel like it's going to leave quietly.