“Your phone,” she said.
“I know.”
“It’s been ringing for five minutes.”
“I know.”
“Who is it?”
I pulled it out. Looked at the screen. The name glowed up at me with the particular insistence of a person who was not going to stop calling.
CAELUM.
My thumb hovered. The rational part of my brain – the part that understood cause and effect, the part that knew a marriage required communication and that silence was its own kind of cruelty – said: answer. The other part – the part still burning from the lobby, from the receptionist’s voice saying he doesn’t have a wife, from the glass doors closing behind me like a judgment – said: let him wait.
The second part won. I declined the call.
The phone buzzed again almost instantly. I declined again.
“Marlowe.” Sable’s voice was careful. The voice of a woman navigating a minefield she hadn’t personally planted. “I know you’re angry about what happened at the company. And you have every right to be. But ignoring him isn’t going to-“
“He denied me, Sable.” The words came out harder than I intended. “He told that receptionist he didn’t have a wife. While I was standing in his lobby. In a dress I’d put on to surprise him.”
“I know. And that was terrible. But you don’t know why he did it. Maybe there’s context we’re missing. Maybe he didn’t know it was actually us. The receptionist said ‘two women claiming to be your wife’ – how many times do you think people have tried that?”
I stared at her. The logic was inconvenient and possibly correct, which was the worst kind of logic.
“Just call him back,” Sable said. “Not for him. For you. You’re in a hospital with your brother, Sterling just pulled a gun, and Dorian knocked a man unconscious in the lobby. You could use an ally.”
The phone buzzed again. CAELUM. I looked at his name on the screen and thought about the roses on my bed. The note. Sunshine. The man who’d knelt on my bedroom floor twice in one evening because I’d slapped him and he’d come back anyway.
I answered.
“Hello, Caelum.” My voice was calm. Guarded. The vocal equivalent of a door that’s open but has a chain on it.
A breath on the other end – sharp, relieved, the exhalation of a man who’d been holding air in his lungs for too long. “Marlowe. Thank God.”
“What’s so urgent?”
“There’s something I need to discuss with you. Something I can’t-“
“Let me tell you what we can discuss, Caelum.” The anger surfaced, clean and specific. “I came to your office today. I told your receptionist I was your wife. And you told her you didn’t have one. Sable and I were thrown out by security. Your security. In your building. So before we discuss whatever it is you want to discuss – explain that.”
The silence that followed was different from the earlier ones. This one had weight. I could almost hear the pieces connecting in his mind – the receptionist’s call, the two women in the lobby, the order he’d given.
“That was you,” he said. Not a question. A realization arriving like a delayed impact.
“That was me.”
Another silence. This one was thinner. More fragile. The silence of a man understanding the magnitude of what he’d done.
“Marlowe, I – I didn’t know. The receptionist said someone was claiming to be my wife. It happens – people try to get access, journalists, competitors – I assumed it was a con. I would never have – if I’d known it was you-“
“But you didn’t ask, Caelum. You didn’t ask her to describe me. You didn’t come downstairs to check. You just said: I don’t have a wife.”
The words hung between us like smoke.
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.