Chương 9
“I know.”
Margaret folded her hands.
“I also wanted to tell you that Ethan is no longer living there.”
“He told me.”
Margaret’s eyes sharpened slightly.
“So you speak.”
“Occasionally.”
“I see.”
Claire leaned back.
“If you came to discuss Ethan, don’t.”
Margaret looked toward the open doorway.
Employees moved quietly outside.
“I came to apologize.”
Claire almost laughed.
Margaret saw it.
“I understand your skepticism.”
“Do you?”
“I knew Ethan intended to end the engagement.”
“You helped him.”
“Yes.”
“You chose the guests.”
“Yes.”
“You knew Vivian was coming.”
“Yes.”
“And you let him tell me to wear that dress.”
Margaret looked surprised.
“He told you what to wear?”
Claire stared.
For the first time, Margaret appeared genuinely unsettled.
“No.”
The answer was immediate.
Claire believed her.
That somehow made it worse.
Margaret looked down at her hands.
“I believed ending the engagement was necessary.”
“Why?”
“Because Ethan was trying to save Sterling Hospitality through a relationship he believed could produce capital.”
“Vivian.”
“Yes.”
“And I was inconvenient.”
“You were dangerous.”
Claire’s expression changed.
Margaret continued before she could respond.
“Not in the way you think.”
“Then explain.”
“You did not need the Sterling name.”
Claire waited.
“Ethan grew up believing people wanted access to him. His name, his family, the house, his future. You were the first woman he seriously loved who could lose all of that and remain completely secure.”
Claire said nothing.
Margaret looked almost embarrassed by her own honesty.
“I saw what it did to him.”
“What?”
“It made him uncertain.”
Claire’s voice cooled.
“So you decided to protect him from uncertainty.”
“I decided to protect what remained of the family.”
“By finding him a richer bride.”
“When you say it like that—”
“There isn’t a sophisticated way to say it.”
Margaret’s mouth tightened.
Claire recognized Ethan in the expression.
Margaret looked toward the window.
“I spent twenty years keeping that family from understanding how fragile everything was.”
“That was your choice.”
“Yes.”
“You lied to Ethan.”
“Yes.”
“You blamed my father.”
“Yes.”
“You treated me like an intruder while living in a property my company owned.”
“Yes.”
Claire stared at her.
“What exactly are you apologizing for?”
Margaret looked back.
“The champagne glass.”
Claire’s breath caught.
Margaret continued quietly.
“I knew Ethan intended to make a scene. I did not know what he planned to say. When he took your ring, I could have stopped him.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No.”
“And then you told me not to embarrass myself.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Margaret was silent.
Claire waited.
At last she said, “Because for approximately ten seconds, watching you stand there humiliated made me feel safe.”
The honesty was ugly.
Claire appreciated it.
Margaret’s eyes remained steady.
“You represented everything I could not control. Money I had not arranged. A house I no longer owned. A son who listened to you. A future in which the Sterling name mattered less than it had before.”
She swallowed.
“And when Ethan hurt you, I mistook your pain for proof that I still had power.”
Claire looked at her for a long time.
No apology could make that beautiful.
That helped.
“I don’t forgive you.”
Margaret nodded.
“I didn’t expect you to.”
“I may never.”
“I understand.”
“No, you don’t.”
Margaret accepted that too.
Claire leaned forward.
“But I believe you’re sorry.”
Margaret’s eyes flickered.
It was the closest Claire had ever seen her come to tears.
She stood before they arrived.
“Thank you for seeing me.”
Claire remained seated.
Margaret picked up her handbag.
At the door she stopped.
“You should know Ethan did love you.”
Claire’s jaw tightened.
“Please don’t.”
Margaret nodded.
Then left.
Claire sat alone.
Nora appeared a minute later holding two coffees.
“Well?”
Claire took one.
“She apologized.”
“Is everyone doing that now?”
“Apparently.”
“Should I?”
“For what?”
“I ate your emergency chocolate yesterday.”
Claire stared.
“You monster.”
Nora handed her the coffee.
Ordinary life resumed.
Not quickly.
Not cleanly.
But it resumed.
Ethan moved into a two-bedroom apartment in Back Bay.
The first night he discovered he did not own a corkscrew.
He stood in the kitchen holding a bottle of wine and laughed until the laughter became something else.
He put the bottle away.
For the first time in his life, he lived without household staff.
He burned eggs.
He forgot trash day.
He learned the building’s elevator made a grinding noise between the fourth and fifth floors.
He found that nobody cared his grandfather’s portrait had once hung in a library.
At work, the consequences were less domestic.
Langford Capital withdrew from the large investment.
Sterling Hospitality survived, but smaller.
Ethan stepped down from two ceremonial positions and took direct responsibility for a restructuring he had previously expected other people to handle.
Several board members opposed him.
One resigned.
Another told him privately that his behavior at the party had made him look like a man who confused cruelty with decisiveness.
Ethan did not argue.
Months earlier, he would have.
Claire heard pieces of this through business circles and tried not to seek more.
Sometimes she succeeded.
Sometimes she searched his name at midnight and hated herself afterward.
She did not stop loving him on schedule.
That surprised her most.
Anger remained easier.
Love became embarrassing.
She missed things that had nothing to do with betrayal.
The way Ethan warmed her side of the bed before she got in.
His terrible habit of leaving cabinet doors open.
The voice he used when speaking to dogs.
How seriously he took restaurant recommendations from taxi drivers.
Once, walking past a bakery, Claire saw a lemon tart and had to leave because Ethan always bought them for her even though he hated lemon.
Grief had bad taste.
It chose ordinary things.
Three months after the party, Claire met Ethan by accident at a hospital fundraiser.
Neither knew the other was attending.
Claire considered leaving.
Then she became angry that leaving had occurred to her.
So she stayed.
May you like
They were seated at different tables.
For an hour they did not speak.
