Drew laughed. "Okay, maybe three."
"Four. I have the deck timestamped."
The table laughed. Madeleine laughed too, because what else was there to do, and the sound that came out of her was convincing enough that no one looked twice. She reached for her wine.
It wasn't the joke. She didn't care about the joke. It was the way Drew had turned his whole body toward Victoria when she interrupted, angling his chair so his back was to Ruben on his left. It was the way Victoria's correction carried the easy authority of someone who'd been there, who'd seen him stumble, who'd caught him. It was the shorthand. The intimacy ofI counted. The fact that Drew had told Madeleine the San Francisco story over dinner two weeks ago and hadn't mentioned freezing, hadn't mentioned Victoria rescuing the pitch, had told it as a solo triumph. And now Victoria was rewriting it in front of eight people and Drew was letting her. Enjoying it. Leaning into the revision like a man being told a better version of his own history.
Madeleine cut a piece of lamb, chewed it and tasted nothing.
It happened again over dessert. And again during coffee. Small erosions, each one deniable on its own. Victoria touching Drew's sleeve when she made a point. Drew refilling Victoria's glass before Madeleine's, before anyone's, with the unthinking attentiveness of muscle memory. A reference to a restaurant in Rittenhouse Madeleine had never been to.
"Remember that carbonara?" Victoria said, and Drew closed his eyes and groaned, "God, that carbonara," and it was nothing, it was pasta, except Madeleine hadn't known about the dinner, the carbonara and the restaurant.
She sat at the foot of the table in the dining room she had made beautiful and smiled. She didn’t ask when they'd gone or who else had been there or why Drew hadn't mentioned it.
She cleared the dessert plates. In the kitchen, alone, she stood at the sink, ran the water too hot and held her hands underit until her skin flushed pink. She could hear them through the doorway. Drew's voice, lower now, the bourbon-loosened register he saved for people he was comfortable with. Victoria's laugh. The carbonara story had become a thread that led to another story about another trip, Tokyo this time, a conference Madeleine hadn't attended because she'd had the flu. Victoria was saying "you should've seen his face when the translator" and the table erupted. Madeleine turned off the water and dried her hands on the dish towel she'd embroidered herself, the one with the small blue flowers along the hem, and folded it into a neat square on the counter.
When she came back, Ruben caught her arm. "Mad, this was incredible. Seriously. You outdid yourself."
"Thank you, Ruben."
"Drew's a lucky guy."
She looked across the room. Drew was standing by the window with Victoria and Brian, his hand in his pocket, his head tilted toward Victoria while she talked. From here, from the far end of the room, they looked like a photograph someone would use on a company website. The founders. The partnership. The story that made sense.
Madeleine looked like the caterer.
"He is," she said.
Ruben squeezed her arm and moved on. She stood in the doorway of her living room and watched her husband laugh with someone else.I made the lamb. I ironed the napkins. I put the candles in the holders, chilled the wine and rearranged the table for a woman who wasn't invited. And he hasn't looked at me once in the last hour.
She didn’t think:This is a problem.
She thought:This is a Tuesday.
And that was worse.
CHAPTER 2
MADELEINE
The last guestleft at eleven-forty.
Brian lingered longest, helping Madeleine carry wineglasses to the kitchen while Drew walked with Ruben, Lisa and Victoria to the elevator. Brian was the kind of man who noticed when a hostess was tired, who dried a glass without being asked, and Madeleine liked him for it even as she wished he would leave so she could stop performing.
"Gorgeous evening, Mad. Really." He set the last glass on the counter. "You're wasted on dinner parties. You should be running a restaurant."
"I'd hate it. I only like cooking for people I actually want to talk to."
Brian grinned. "Then I'm honored." He kissed her cheek and let himself out.
Drew was back in the living room, loosening his tie. He'd switched from bourbon to water at some point, which meant he was thinking about the six a.m. call with the Singapore team, which meant he was already somewhere else. His phone buzzed on the coffee table. He glanced at it.
Madeleine blew out the candles. Wax had pooled in the holders the way she'd wanted, deep amber puddles that smelledlike fig and cedar. She carried them to the kitchen and scraped the wax into the trash with a butter knife, working each holder clean while Drew headed upstairs. His footsteps moved overhead: bathroom, closet, the creak of the bedroom floor near his side of the bed.
She loaded the dishwasher and wiped the counters. When she came upstairs, Drew was in bed with his laptop open, reading something that made his eyebrows pull together. She unzipped her black dress, hung it in the closet and stood there for a moment in her slip, looking at the row of clothes she owned. She'd bought the dress for tonight. She'd tried on four others before choosing it, had stood in the fitting room turning left and right in front of the mirror, thinking about the neckline, the way the fabric moved, whether Drew would notice. He hadn't said anything when she'd come downstairs. He'd saidlooks greatabout the table.
She pulled on a cotton nightgown, washed her face and brushed her teeth and sat on the edge of the bed.
