Chapter 7-Consequences

My hands were shaking.

I looked at them in the mirror. Pearl earring still in my right hand, necklace clasp open. They were shaking and I didn’t know if it was fear or something else and I didn’t want to look too closely.

I set the earring down.

The sound felt too loud.

From the bathroom came the tap running. Donald moving through his routine with the calm efficiency of a man who had already finished the evening.

I had said:

Yes. I knew him. Years ago. Before us. It was nothing.

Every word was true.

The way I said it — calm, hands in my lap, voice of a woman with nothing to hide — was the lie.

Not the words.

The woman.

I had gotten very good at things that should have been hard.

On the dressing table, half-hidden under the necklace I had just set down, was a folded piece of paper.

I hadn’t put it there.

I picked it up.

Unfolded it.

A torn magazine page.

A coat circled in pencil.

Underneath, in handwriting I didn’t recognise:

Still yours.

I stared at it.

The bathroom door opened.

I turned it face down.

Reached for my earring.

Donald crossed the room without looking at me, got into bed, and turned off his lamp.

Darkness on his side.

Lamplight on mine.

I didn’t move.

I picked up the phone eventually.

His message was still there.

Seven words.

No punctuation.

I wonder what we could have been Anita.

Not a question.

Something he had been carrying for a long time.

I read it again.

The lamp was the only light on in the room.

I read those words a third time and found, underneath them, a memory I hadn’t let myself go near in a long time.

His apartment.

Late — almost morning.

We were laughing about something I can’t even remember now.

Something small.

It only mattered because he was there.

Then we stopped at the same time.

He was looking at me like he’d already decided something.

Just waiting to see if I would follow.

“I want to do this properly,” he said.

I smiled.

Not because it was funny.

Because he made it sound simple, and nothing in my life had ever been simple.

“Do what properly?”

“You. Us.”

He didn’t look away.

“I want you to be mine properly.”

I laughed.

Loud.

Certain.

“Kelvin.”

His name was the ending of it.

“Anita’s surname isn’t one to settle.”

He didn’t argue.

Just looked at me for a long moment, like something in him had shifted and he didn’t know where to put it.

I know what that look was now.

I hadn’t settled.

I had calculated.

Made a choice with my eyes open and my father’s company sitting in the back of my mind.

Put the sketchbooks away.

Put the laugh away.

Put the version of myself that knew what she wanted somewhere I stopped going.

I picked up my phone.

I wonder what we could have been Anita.

My thumb moved before I finished deciding.

I typed three words.

Looked at them.

The cursor blinked.

The city outside.

The lamp.

Donald’s breathing.

My own face in the dark mirror.

I pressed send.

So do I.

I put the phone down.

It was October and it was raining and I was at my father’s house the night before I was supposed to sign.

I had been trying to sleep for two hours. The bed in my old room was the same bed I had slept in since I was twelve and it felt smaller now or I felt larger or something had shifted between me and that room and I could not get comfortable.

I heard the gate at eleven.

I got up. Pulled my cardigan on. Went to the window.

He was standing in the garden in the rain. His jacket was soaked through. He had been there long enough for that to happen, long enough for his hair to go flat against his forehead, and he was just standing there looking up at the house.

I went downstairs.

I opened the door and stepped onto the top step and the cold came in immediately. I pulled my cardigan tighter. It did not help much.

He looked up at me.

“Don’t,” he said.

I hadn’t heard his voice in three weeks. We had not spoken since I told him what I was going to do. I had thought I was ready for this. I was not ready for his voice.

“Kelvin—”

“Don’t marry him.” He came to the bottom step. His hands were at his sides. “Please. Don’t do this.”

“You don’t understand what’s at stake—”

“I understand everything.” His voice broke on the last word and he let it. “Your father. The company. Three hundred people. I’ve known all of it since you told me. I’m asking you anyway.”

The rain started reaching under the overhang. I pulled my cardigan tighter again.

“I have to,” I said.

“You don’t.”

“There’s no other way—”

“There is always another way.” He came up one more step. Eye level now. I could see how wet he was, how cold he had to be, and he was not doing anything about any of it. “Give me time. I’ll find another way. Just don’t sign tomorrow.”

“Kelvin—”

“I love you.” He said it quietly. Like a fact he was tired of carrying alone. “I love you and I am asking you not to go. That is the whole thing.”

I didn’t say anything.

He looked at me for a moment longer.

Then he went down on his knees.

I was not prepared for that. I don’t think anything could have prepared me for that. He just went down onto the wet ground and looked up at me and his face had nothing left in it that was managed or contained and the rain was in his eyes and he did not move to wipe it.

“Please don’t do this,” he said. “Please. I’m begging you.”

His voice cracked on the last word.

I looked down at him and I did not know what to do with my hands. I held them against my sides and they were shaking and I kept thinking I should say something and nothing came.

“Get up,” I said finally. “Kelvin. Please get up.”

He didn’t.

We stayed like that for a while. The rain coming down. Neither of us moving. I don’t know how long. Long enough that my cardigan was wet through.

Then I heard footsteps behind me. My father’s security guard coming around the side of the house on his nightly check. He stopped when he saw Kelvin. Didn’t say anything. Just stood there.

Kelvin looked at him.

Then he put one hand on the ground and pushed himself up.

It took a moment.

He stood.

He didn’t look at me again.

He walked back to the gate and I heard it close behind him.

I went inside. Sat at the kitchen table. My cardigan was dripping onto the chair and I noticed that and did not move to change it.

I sat there until the house got quiet and then I sat there a little longer.

The next morning I signed the papers.

I hadn’t looked at that memory directly in a long time.

I was looking at it now.

He had knelt in the rain.

He had said I love you like it was the last honest thing he had left.

And I had stepped back.

I turned the phone face down.

Got up.

Looked at Donald’s sleeping shape on his side of the bed. The lamp still on mine. The line between us sharp and exact and not once chosen by me.

Then I went to the wardrobe. Pushed past the dresses — the green one from tonight, the blue from last year’s gala, all the ones he had chosen, a row of correct choices that had never once been mine.

I brought the box to the dressing table. Sat down. Lifted the lid.

My sketchbooks. Six of them. The last one still had a pencil tucked in the spine.

I looked at them for a long time.

I took the pencil out. Opened to the first blank page.

Then I looked at the circled coat on the magazine page.

I started to draw.

My hand was still shaking. The first line wasn’t straight. I didn’t stop.

I drew.

I don’t know how long. The lamp made its small circle. I drew and didn’t think about anything except the line, and then the next line, and the shoulder which was wrong and I fixed it and it was better and then it was right.

When I stopped my neck ached.

I looked at what I’d made.

I didn’t … I couldn’t…

I put the pencil back in the spine. Left the sketchbook on the table. Didn’t put it back in the box.

My hand still knew.