"And beyond that?"
"There's no beyond that."
The words settled between them with finality. She looked back at the lake. The surface was dark, broken in places by the reflected light of the reception windows, and somewhere out on the water a single boat was moving slowly north.
"Then we understand each other," she said.
"Yes."
But there was something in how he said the word that told heryeswasn't what he meant. She didn't ask him what he did mean.
Later, when the last of the guests had finally been sent home and the carefully constructed day was finished, they'd ridden together in the silence of the car back to the penthouse that wasnow, technically, hers. Noelle entered and stood at the wall of glass, again looking out at Chicago.
Behind her, she heard the soft sounds of a husband in his own home at the end of a long day. Jacket removed. Cuffs unbuttoned. The muted scrape of a chair. He moved through the space without any acknowledgment of her, and she thought …this is the rest of it. This is what the rest of it will feel like.
She didn't turn. She pressed her palm against the glass. The cold of it steadied her.
Then she straightened.
Whatever this marriage was, whatever it became, she'd meet it with the same composure she'd always relied on. She'd been trained for this. She'd been trained, if nothing else, for this.
Behind her, Elias spoke.
"You should get some rest."
His voice was low, even, entirely courteous. The voice of a host.
He stood a few feet from her, jacket gone, tie loosened one notch at the throat. The light in the penthouse was low and amber, and in the amber light the severity of his face was not any less severe, only more shadowed. He had, she realized, been watching her for some time.
"Yes," she said.
She inclined her head. It was formal. It was almost absurd, the formality of it, in a room that was now their shared home on the night of their wedding. But she had nothing else to give him, and she wouldn't give him the ghost of anything larger.
"Good night."
"Good night, Noelle."
CHAPTER 3
NOELLE
The first weeksof her marriage passed quickly.
Nobody explained the penthouse to her. Nobody sat her down. There was no housekeeper with a clipboard, no welcome breakfast, no orientation to a life Noelle was now expected to lead. The space simply operated, and she was invited, by its operation, to operate inside it.
The coffee was brought at six-fifteen. The curtains in the east rooms opened at seven. Fresh flowers arrived twice a week from a florist on Oak Street, and the old flowers went into the service elevator in a neat green bag on Mondays and Thursdays. The woman who did it, a slim, gentle woman named Maura, who had worked for Elias for ten years, never once asked Noelle what she preferred.
Noelle learned by watching.
She learned that Elias took his coffee black and standing, at the kitchen island, reading something on his phone. That he left the penthouse at seven-twenty, almost never seven-twenty-one. That he returned, on a good night, at ten; on an ordinary night, closer to midnight; on a bad night, after she'd gone to bed. She learned that he preferred the study to the living room, that he didn't use the terrace, that he had a habit of closing doors behindhim even when he was the only person in the apartment. She learned that there was a pair of running shoes in the hall closet, still muddy at the toe, and that he came home from wherever he ran them in before she was awake.
She learned these things because there was nothing else to learn.
By the end of the first week, she'd attributed his distance to work. By the end of the second, to the adjustment of two strangers sharing a home. By the end of the third, she'd understood that what she was watching wasn't a phase that would pass. It was the shape of the life he intended to keep.
Still, she tried.
She was careful about it. She'd been raised not to push. She'd been raised to suggest: to leave a room at a small angle, a chair turned slightly, a door half-open, so that if someone wanted to enter, they could, and if they didn't, no one was embarrassed. She made sure dinner was available in the evenings without requiring him to come to it. She learned the handful of subjects he responded to — markets, the firm, a news item in theJournal— and stayed on those and left the rest alone. She asked Maura which wine he preferred with the fish and stocked it. She didn't ask where he'd been when he came home late. She didn't reach for him when he passed her in the hall.
