Chapter 10 - RICHARD’S VERSION OF LOVE
The relatives left in waves over the next twenty minutes.
Some made excuses about other family stops.
Some kissed Elena’s cheek awkwardly.
Diane stayed long enough to help gather plates despite Elena telling her it wasn’t necessary.
Jessica and Carter left without dessert.
Jessica cried in the elevator lobby, furious not because Elena had shamed her, but because her father had fed her a story that collapsed in public.
That left Elena, Richard, and the smell of cooling beef and wax and spilled wine under the chandelier.
Richard stood at the end of the table as if waiting for the room to return his authority.
It didn’t.
Finally he said, “You enjoyed that.”
Elena looked at him.
“No.”
“Really.”
“You think this was entertainment?”
“You wanted to make me look small.”
Elena held his gaze.
“I wanted to stop agreeing to look small.”
Richard turned away, then back.
What came out of him next was closer to truth than almost anything she had heard in years.
“I was trying to keep peace.”
Elena shook her head.
“No. You were trying to keep comfort. There’s a difference.”
Richard sat down across from her.
The fight seemed to go out of him for a moment.
“When we bought this place, we bought it together.”
Elena nodded once.
“In one sense, yes.”
“So why are you behaving like I tricked you into a fraud?”
Because that was not quite the lie, she realized.
Richard had not tricked her into title.
He had tricked her into disappearance.
“You didn’t trick me into buying the penthouse,” Elena said. “You let me believe the structure of our life would reflect the structure of our promises.”
Richard pressed thumb and forefinger to his brow.
“Elena…”
“No. Listen.”
It was the first time in many years she had said that word to him without softening afterward.
“You let Jessica turn me into hired help because correcting her cost you more discomfort than sacrificing me did. You asked me to sign papers giving away this apartment like I was a notary in my own house. And tonight, when your daughter shoved me to the floor, you told me to eat in the kitchen.”
Richard looked down.
That, more than any protest, told her she had found the center.
“Jessica is still grieving her mother,” he said quietly.
Elena stared at him.
“She is twenty-seven.”
“She lost Claire young.”
“And I lost Thomas at forty-two.”
Richard did not answer.
“Did anyone give me permission to behave badly for twenty years?”
“No.”
“Then stop dressing her entitlement as grief.”
The room went still again.
Richard finally looked back up.
His face had lost its social polish. He looked older than sixty-five. Tired, even frightened.
“I didn’t think you’d take it this far.”
There.
The real confession.
Not that he thought Elena was wrong.
That he thought she would endure it.
She stood carefully, one hand on the table, the other on the cane.
May you like
“I know,” she said.
And because she knew, something essential in the marriage had ended.
