Happy Anniversary, Husband

Chapter 7:

The restaurant in Brooklyn had only eleven tables, and one of them was ours.

It was the same one, by the window, with the same flickering candle in a jam jar. Almost four years ago, Julian had gone down on one knee on that patch of worn wooden floor, and the other diners had applauded, and I had cried into a linen napkin.

Tonight I wore my hair loose and my lipstick the color of crushed berries, and I told myself I was an actress hired for one evening only. I had stopped by the Orpheum that afternoon to collect his gift from my desk drawer. Dev had waved at me from the scaffolding. I had waved back like a woman with nothing to hide.

"You look beautiful," Julian said, arriving eleven minutes late. He slid into the chair across from me with a smile that fit him perfectly. He had put on the navy suit, the one that made his eyes warm, and he carried a small white box tied with silver ribbon.

"Happy anniversary, my love."

"Happy anniversary."

The waiter poured wine. Julian ordered for both of us, the way he always did, and I let him. Between the bread and the soup he told me a long, charming story about a dispute with a supplier, and I laughed in all the right places and watched his hands.

His phone lay face-down beside his bread plate. Twice it buzzed. Twice his fingers drifted toward it and stopped, as if he had remembered the part he was supposed to be playing.

"Open it," he said, nudging the box across the table.

Inside lay a pendant on a thin silver chain, a small, polished pearl in a setting so plain it could have belonged to anyone. A card tucked beneath it read, in neat typed letters: "L & J, Forever."

Typed. Not handwritten.

I knew his handwriting. I knew the slant of his J, the lazy loop of his L. This card had come off a printer in some office, ordered by someone who had been told "anniversary, wife, pearl, something nice."

"It's lovely," I said, and fastened it at my throat while he beamed.

"I picked it out myself."

"Did you?"

"I did." A shadow passed over his eyes, quick and gone. "With some help. The jeweler had excellent taste."

He lied well. Better than I had ever noticed. Julian could say anything with the same warm, open face, and I understood now that he had been practicing that face his whole life.

I had a gift of my own. I slid the wrapped book across the table, the first-edition volume of the Hartwell Grand's original architectural plans. I had hunted for it for two years. His grandfather had built that hotel, and Julian spoke of him with something like reverence.

He unwrapped it slowly. When he saw the cover, his whole face softened. For a moment, a real moment, I saw something raw behind the charm.

"Lena," he said quietly. "Where did you find this?"

"A dealer in Boston. It took a while."

"It's perfect." He turned the pages with reverent fingers. "I don't deserve you."

I held my smile so tightly that my cheeks ached.

"No," I said. "You don't."

He laughed, assuming it was a joke.

The food came. We ate. The candle guttered in its jar. I watched him cut his lamb and remembered every small, tender thing he had ever done for me: the winter he drove four hours through snow to bring me soup, the night he held me on the bathroom floor after my mother's funeral. Had those been lies too? Or had they been true, and gone sour later, the way milk does?

The worse answer was the one I believed. They had been true. That was why it hurt.

"Julian," I said, as the waiter cleared our plates. "Do you ever think about the bracelet?"

He paused with his glass halfway to his mouth. "Which bracelet?"

"My father's. The green stone. The one you lost."

The tiniest hesitation. "Of course I do. I still feel terrible about it."

"Did you look in the hotel? Maybe it fell somewhere there."

"I looked everywhere, darling." He reached across the table and covered my hand with his. His palm was warm and dry. "Everywhere. It's gone. I'm so sorry."

I looked down at his fingers lying across mine.

"I know," I whispered.

His phone lit up again. This time the screen angled toward me, just enough that I could read the name above the preview before he flipped it over.

Serena W.

I did not breathe.

"Work," Julian said, with an apologetic grimace. "I'm so sorry. I'll mute it."

"Take it," I said gently. "I don't mind."

"No, no. Tonight is ours."

He smiled at me, and I smiled back, and somewhere inside me a very small, very quiet woman began to count.

One for the roses. Two for the robe. Three for the bracelet. Four for the typed card.

She would keep counting for as long as it took.