Chương 11
Too many decisions for one property had been made because nobody wanted to say what something meant.
Claire took out her phone.
She called Nora.
“Sell Sterling House.”
A pause.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“We’ll need board approval.”
“I know.”
“You could get more after renovations.”
“I know.”
“Market is decent.”
“I know.”
Nora sighed.
“You make conversations very boring when you agree with me.”
Claire looked back at the mansion.
“I don’t want to live here.”
“I assumed.”
“I don’t want Ethan’s family living here.”
“They aren’t.”
“I don’t want to keep owning it just because my father bought it.”
Nora went quiet.
“That sounds healthier.”
“Don’t ruin it.”
“Sorry.”
Claire smiled.
“Bring it to the board.”
“Will do.”
The mansion sold four months later to a family Claire never met.
The transaction generated a respectable return.
Nothing poetic happened to the money.
It went into the fund.
Claire bought an industrial property outside Chicago two weeks later.
Life continued.
A year after the party, Claire turned thirty.
She had dinner with Nora and six friends at a noisy restaurant where the tables were too close together and the waiter accidentally brought someone else’s appetizers.
Nobody recognized her.
She liked that.
After dinner she returned to the Harbor apartment.
It had become home again.
Not because she had planned it.
One week became a month. A month became six.
She replaced the low sofa her father hated, then spent two weeks missing it.
On her birthday, she opened the desk drawer where she had kept Ethan’s ring.
The velvet box remained there.
She had considered selling it.
She had considered returning it.
She had considered putting it in a safe-deposit box and forgetting it existed.
Instead, she called Ethan.
He answered cautiously.
“Claire?”
“Hi.”
“Happy birthday.”
She smiled.
“You remembered.”
“I remember everything.”
“I know.”
Silence.
Then he said, “Is everything okay?”
“Yes.”
“I wasn’t expecting—”
“I have your grandmother’s ring.”
Another silence.
“I told you. It’s yours.”
“No.”
“Claire.”
“I wore it because I thought I was going to marry you.”
He breathed out.
“I know.”
“I’m not.”
“I know.”
“So it isn’t mine.”
He said nothing.
Claire looked at the box.
“I want to return it.”
“You can mail it.”
“I could.”
“But?”
“I don’t want to.”
They agreed to meet at a café on Saturday afternoon.
Claire arrived first.
Ethan came three minutes late and apologized.
He wore jeans and a dark sweater.
She had seen him dressed casually hundreds of times, yet without the context of their relationship he seemed unfamiliar.
They ordered coffee.
Claire placed the ring box on the table.
Ethan looked at it but did not touch it.
“You could keep it.”
“No.”
“My grandmother would have liked you.”
“You told me she hated everyone.”
“She did.”
Claire laughed.
Ethan smiled.
Then his expression softened.
“I’m glad you called.”
Claire looked down at her coffee.
“I almost didn’t.”
“Why did you?”
She considered lying.
Then didn’t.
“Because I don’t want the worst thing you did to be the last thing I know about you.”
Ethan’s eyes lifted.
Claire continued before she lost courage.
“That doesn’t mean I want to get back together.”
“I understand.”
“It doesn’t mean what happened is fixed.”
“I know.”
“It means I loved you.”
His throat moved.
“And I don’t like pretending I didn’t.”
Ethan looked away.
A barista dropped a metal pitcher behind the counter.
Both of them jumped slightly.
Claire smiled.
“Still dramatic.”
“Apparently.”
He looked at the ring box.
“I loved you too.”
“I know.”
“I think part of me still—”
“Don’t.”
He stopped.
Claire held his eyes.
“Not today.”
After a moment, he nodded.
“Okay.”
They drank coffee.
They talked about ordinary things.
His apartment elevator had finally been repaired.
Nora had adopted a dog she insisted was temporary.
Margaret had renovated the kitchen she hated and then complained that contractors had ruined the original character.
Claire laughed hard enough to spill coffee.
For forty minutes they behaved almost like people who had once known each other well.
Then Claire stood.
Ethan picked up the ring box.
The shape of it disappeared into his coat pocket.
For the first time since the party, Claire’s hand felt completely empty.
Not bare.
Empty.
There was a difference.
Outside, the afternoon was cold and bright.
They stood on the sidewalk.
Ethan said, “Can I ask you something?”
“You can ask.”
“If I hadn’t done it that way—if I’d told you privately that I was confused, that I was afraid about the company, that Vivian—”
Claire shook her head.
“You’re asking about a version of you who made different choices.”
He looked down.
“Yes.”
“I don’t know that person.”
He accepted that.
Cars moved past.
Someone leaned on a horn.
A delivery cyclist cursed at a taxi.
Ethan smiled faintly.
“That sounds like something your father would say.”
Claire’s eyes narrowed.
“You met him twice.”
“He scared me both times.”
“He liked you.”
“No, he didn’t.”
“He did a little.”
“I’ll take it.”
They stood there another second.
Then Ethan reached out his hand.
Not for hers.
Just a handshake.
Claire looked at it.
He seemed suddenly embarrassed.
“This is weird.”
“It’s extremely weird.”
“I can put it away.”
“No.”
She took his hand.
His fingers were warm.
Familiar.
For one moment, memory tried to pull them backward.
Claire let go.
Ethan stepped away first.
“Goodbye, Claire.”
“Goodbye, Ethan.”
He walked west.
Claire went east.
At the corner, she resisted the urge to turn around.
Not because turning around would mean weakness.
Not because she needed to prove anything.
She simply wanted the next thing she saw to belong to the life in front of her.
The pedestrian signal changed.
Claire crossed with everyone else.
A man beside her carried flowers wrapped in brown paper. A little girl dragged a purple backpack over the curb. Someone behind Claire laughed into a phone. The city moved without knowing what she had survived, which felt less lonely than it once would have.
Halfway across the street, Claire noticed her bare left hand swinging beside her coat.
May you like
It did not tremble.
She kept walking.
