“I remember her.”
“She's marrying an accountant from Laval. Very sensible.”
Simone leaned against the counter and let her mother's voice fill the penthouse. Nadine talked practically, without embellishment; each sentence carrying exactly the information it needed to carry and nothing more—the garden, the neighbors, and the church, where the new pastor was still too young and still talked too much, which Nadine had told him so to his face last Sunday. Either the pastor was going to get better at sermons or start avoiding Nadine, and both outcomes were fine with her.
This was the only conversation in Simone's life that didn't require her to perform. She didn't need to be strategic or charming. She just needed to listen and Nadine just needed to talk, and somewhere in the ordinary exchange of garden updates and neighborhood gossip was the closest thing to warmth that either of them knew how to offer.
Nadine asked if she was eating properly, and Simone said yes, which was mostly true. Nadine asked about the weather inPhoenix Ridge, and Simone described the rain, the late autumn gray, and the way the coastal fog blanketed everything for days.
“That sounds miserable,” her mother said.
Simone shrugged involuntarily. “You get used to it.”
“How much longer will you be there?”
Simone knew the question was neutral. Her mother never asked about acquisitions directly and had no interest in the mechanics of corporate finance. She regarded Simone's career with the pragmatic respect of a woman who understood that her daughter had built something substantial, even if the specific substance was beyond her.
Except she asked how long, but what she was really asking waswhen are you coming home?Wherehomemeant Montreal, the small house in Villeray with the kitchen that was too small and the garden that produced more vegetables than one woman could possibly eat, the place where Simone wasn’t the CEO of anything but was instead just Nadine's daughter, the girl who'd done bookkeeping at the folding table. That girl was someone Simone didn't know what to do with anymore.
“I'm not sure,” Simone said. “The timeline is flexible.”
“Flexible,” Nadine repeated.
Simone almost said something. She could feel it in her throat, the shape of a sentence she hadn't constructed yet:I've met someone.Or not that. That was too simple, too much like the conversations other daughters had with other mothers, the kind where feelings were discussed over coffee and advice was given and the whole thing happened in a shared language both parties spoke fluently. Simone and Nadine didn't have that language. They had logistics and money and the weekly call with the particular tenderness expressed asare you eating properlyandthe kale is done for the year. Simone had never once felt the limitation of that dynamic the way she felt it now, sitting in a penthouse with nothing personal in it, wanting to saythere'sa woman here who sees me the way you never learned how to, and I don't know if that's a betrayal of you or a consequence of you or just the thing that happens when someone finally reaches the part of me you built the walls around.
She didn't say any of it. She asked about Madame Beaulieu's daughter's wedding plans, and they talked for another ten minutes about nothing that held any real significance. When they hung up, Simone set the phone down on the counter and stood in the warm, empty apartment and felt the specific ache of being loved completely by someone in a language she could barely speak.
She finished her wine, poured half a glass more, then she called Audrey.
Audrey Liang picked up on the second ring and skipped the pleasantries by mutual preference.
“Linden Capital,” Audrey said. “Tess sent the numbers. Congratulations. You've crossed the threshold.”
“I need you to start restructuring the global portfolio review. We'll be filing within the month, and I want the London calendar clear.”
“Already done. I moved the Meridian meeting to January and pushed the Hamburg review to February. You have three commitments in December that I can't shift: the Zürich dinner, the Ashworth closing, and the Tokyo conference call. Everything else can be rescheduled.” She paused. “Speaking of which.”
Simone knew what was coming.
“You've been in Phoenix Ridge for four and a half months,” Audrey said. “The acquisition only budgeted for three. I've been holding your London calendar open since September, declining engagements and rearranging the portfolio schedule. I need a return date, Simone. Even a provisional one.”
The reasonable answer was January. The proxy filing would be done, the shareholder vote would be scheduled, and thephysical presence that Phoenix Ridge required would shift to legal proceedings that could be managed from anywhere. She could be back in London by mid-January, back in her Chelsea apartment on Cheyne Walk, back in the rhythm of a life that worked for her.
She opened her mouth to say January but didn't. The hesitation lasted two seconds, but it was the most revealing thing Simone had done in front of another person in years.
“I don't have a date yet,” she said.
The line went quiet. Audrey was never silent.
“You've always known when you were leaving,” Audrey said. “That's never been your problem.”
The implication—that the problem was what happened when Simone didn't want to leave—sat between London and Phoenix Ridge like a third person on the line. Audrey didn't elaborate. She moved on to the Zürich dinner logistics, and Simone answered on autopilot, managing the calendar, the portfolio review, and the Ashworth closing while the rest of her was still standing in the silence Audrey had carved open with a single observation.
They hung up, and the penthouse closed around her with its climate-controlled air, double-paned glass, and the quiet she'd chosen a hundred times over the noise of a life with other people in it.
She needed to move her body, so she put on her workout gear, purposefully leaving behind the headlamp.
The trail at nine-thirty at night was a different place than the trail at five in the morning. There was no gray light seeping through the tree line, no fog burning off the water, just the thick, wet darkness of a November night on the coast, the kind that erased the edges of things and left only what you could feel underfoot. A steady drizzle of rain hit her face and her hands and the back of her neck where her hair was already soaking through.The ocean below the cliffs was like sound without a distinct shape, enormous and close yet amorphous.
