by Anne Calhoun
He’d thought a favorable reaction from Quality would ease her fears, and her workload. Instead, the opposite happened. After the New Year’s trip to England, Tilda doubled down on work.
Angie hauled open the front door. “But you’re here, more often than not. You might be late, but you’re here, or you call.”
“There are six different financiers and buyers on four continents weighing in on this deal,” Daniel said. “This is a once in a lifetime opportunity that could make or break Tilda’s career.” He cut her off when she opened her mouth. “If you want to yell at me, do it while we’re running.”
They set off down the path to the driveway, then into the street, running in the direction of oncoming traffic. It was too early for much activity on residential streets; they’d avoid the main roads and highways heading into the city for the day. Daniel forced himself to slow his pace. His left knee clicked until the muscles loosened. Beside him his sister jogged grimly along, jaw set, ponytail swinging in time to her stride but with a sharper snap than usual.
“I still don’t get—”
Angie cut herself off, obviously biting her tongue. Some of his nervous energy released by the brisk pace, he said, “Get it off your chest, sis.”
“You’re infatuated. I haven’t seen you like this since high school. Even when you were in uniform and we couldn’t go to the bars without girls throwing themselves at you, you never got like this. You watch her like she’s going to disappear.”
That thought hit a little too close to home. “I love her. I can’t explain that. You either love someone or you don’t. I love her. I’m married to her.”
“I’m just . . . I’m just worried. I admire her drive, the business she’s built for herself, and I have no doubt that if she wants to be a global sensation that she’ll be a global sensation. But you eloped with her after you’d known her for six months. That’s not like you. You have to admit she’s not like any woman you’ve dated before.”
He didn’t respond. Angie had opinions about the way things should be done. Always had. Always would. But those opinions were based on staying loyal to and taking care of the people in a close-knit family. Angie only wanted what was best for him. The problem was that sometimes the things that were best for you weren’t the things that made you feel complete. When he was with Tilda, he felt whole.
“I love her.” Three words, single syllables. They should say everything he needed to say and yet to someone on the outside they were meaningless.
“I just don’t see how she’ll make you happy.”
Maybe he didn’t want to be made happy. Maybe he didn’t want someone to slot him into the neat, orderly rows of How Things Are Done. Maybe he wanted someone who not only sat on ledges or slipped over cliffs, but also dared him to go over with her. “Not your problem, Angie.”
“She’s going to be a ton of work. High maintenance.”
He was running eight miles in a sharp February wind because he liked the hard things, the harder the better, the more complicated and puzzling, the better. Challenges fed him. When they’d done the crosswords or Sudoku puzzles, he approached them with sheer delight, while Angie beat them into submission. “She’s actually no maintenance at all. With Tilda, what you see is what you get.”
They ran on in silence. Daniel pointed out a sheet of black ice, formed when the snow at the corner of a driveway melted in the sunshine, then froze after dark, then led the way down the path and along the trail. It was cooler down here. Darker.
“It just seems like . . . if you’d known each other a little longer . . . whatever fling,” she said, making big gestures with her hands as she ran, “would have burned itself out.”
“Opposites attract,” he said, more flippantly than he meant, because the question struck a nerve.
“You’re not going to manage her the right way,” Angie went on. “You’re analytical, rational, cerebral.”
“I don’t plan to manage her at all.”
“Do you understand her? Really understand her?”
“Does any man really understand a woman?” he said. “I’m not sure I understand you, and I’ve known you thirty years.”
“My point exactly. The whole ink and stationery is like something out of Edith Wharton. It’s artificial, somehow. She’s artificial,” Angie said, her forceful exhales giving the words more emphasis than she meant. Or so Daniel hoped.
He laughed at the idea of Tilda as artificial. She burned too brightly to be fake. Fake didn’t stand up to the kind of fire Tilda generated. “She’s not artificial. She’s anything but.”
“You know what I mean. She’s created.”
He snapped a look at his sister, then avoided a pothole. “I actually don’t know what you mean.”
“The perfect sheath dresses in any color darker than hunter green, the Louis Vuitton, the cashmere, the capsule wardrobe.”
Tilda’s wardrobe was tiny, consisting of a few pieces of the highest quality, worn over and over until they had to be replaced. She made her own money and spent her own money, as did he. In her mind, classic applied to everything from shoes to clothes to stationery. But Angie’s comment made something click into place inside him. In his time on the financial crimes task force, he’d learned that the things that were simple and classic often came with the highest price tag, as if simplicity and timelessness were the best disguise of all. “She doesn’t chase fashion,” Daniel said, struggling to find the right way to describe his wife when all he could come up with was, She’s Tilda.
“She reminds me of a girl I knew in college. On the surface, everything looked perfect, the right clothes, no obvious accent, but no one knew anything about where she was from, where she went to school, who she’d been before she came to Bard. Eventually someone started digging and it turned out she was from some tiny coal town in West Virginia, all but grew up in a shack with no indoor plumbing, until her high school guidance counselor took an interest. She created herself out of nothing.”
“Tilda isn’t from a coal town in West Virginia,” Daniel said. “She went to boarding school. Her mother lives in Oxford. She is exactly what she appears to be, an expat Brit living in New York for the last decade with a passion for clean lines and elegance.”
“So maybe no one’s dug deep enough to find her secrets,” his sister said. “She’s got them. I guarantee it.”
“Fine, Long Island Medium, what do you think her secret is?”
“I don’t know,” his sister said on a hard exhale.
They’d picked up the pace in the middle of the run, going hard for a mile or two before scaling back to head for home. The pace pushed Angie to her limits, but she’d always used him as her bellwether for accomplishments and success. Separated by eleven months, Angie knew that if she could keep up with him in school or in athletics, then she could keep up with almost anyone. This kind of testing characterized their relationship from a very early age. He didn’t worry about the arguing. No, he worried more when Angie shut down.
“She’s covering something,” Angie continued when they scaled back. “Whatever it is will be hidden in plain sight. Right in front of your nose.”
Like your carping at me to cover your grief over losing Uncle K?
They ran to the end of the road, jogged to the end of the street, and walked along the block to the driveway. He reached out and pulled her close, then pressed a kiss into the fleece headband protecting her ears and forehead from the bitter cold. “I’m going to miss him, too,” he said, and felt the shudder ripple through her shoulders.
This was what it meant to be part of a family, understanding that fights didn’t mean that you loved each other any less. In fact, fights often meant that you both loved the other person, and trusted that they would hear the love through the argument. Angie fought with him because she loved him and she trusted him, and she knew that no matter what, family came first. He hadn’
t gone through the usual routine of introducing a woman to his family, letting them get to know each other, proposing marriage, and then throwing a big wedding. But he had done what was right for him. Eventually his family would accept that.
Angie’s face was flushed, and sweat darkened the hair at her temples and nape as she climbed into the Tahoe to drive home and get ready for the funeral. Daniel showered and dressed, and met up with his parents in the kitchen. His mother’s eyes were red but dry. Uncle Kiernan’s death was expected; he’d battled lung cancer for two years. But losing a sibling hurt no matter how much time you had to prepare for it.
“What train is Tilda coming on?” his father asked. “I’ll ask Jerry to pick her up at the station on his way to the church.”
“She’s not coming,” Daniel said. “She’s got a conference call today.”
“Oh,” his mother said quietly.
The soft sound pierced him. “I’m sorry, Mom,” he said, and drew Tilda’s condolence card from his inner breast pocket. He set it on the counter next to his mother’s cup of coffee. “She sends her regrets. She said she’d try to call later. There are too many moving parts to these calls to reschedule them easily.”
“I understand,” his mother said. Her fingers trembled as she turned the card from end to end. “We knew this was coming. We just didn’t know when, and she only met Kiernan once.”
The only way Tilda would become part of his family was by coming to these kinds of family events. Weddings, funerals, soccer games. They’d eloped after knowing each other for mere months. It would get better, when the deal was done.
When the deal’s done her travel schedule will get more brutal, a little voice reminded him. Lately she’d rarely been on the same continent as him, much less the same time zone. Just when she recovered from one stint of jet lag, she set off again. If this kept up much longer, she wouldn’t know where she was, much less who she was.
“I’ll drive, Dad,” he said.
Without a word his father dropped the keys to the Land Rover in Daniel’s outstretched hand. His father jealously retained driving privileges, but got in the backseat with his mother and wrapped his arm around her. She sobbed the whole way to the church, quiet choking sounds of grief that broke Daniel’s heart. He dropped his parents off under the portico, parked the car, then took a couple of minutes to pull himself together before going into the church.
In the vestibule Jessie patted his arm imperiously. “Uncle Daniel, where’s Aunt Tilda?”
“She couldn’t make it, peanut,” he said. “Business.”
“Oh,” Jessie said. “Tell her I’m trying out for the elite team next week, okay? She should come watch. I’m going to make it.”
“I bet you will,” Daniel said.
She turned to hurry after her mother. “Oh,” she said. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
He smiled at her, hearing Angie’s coaching in the sentence. “Thanks, peanut. How are you holding up?”
“I’m being strong for mom,” she said matter-of-factly. “Little K wanted to wear his Thomas sneakers to church, and Mom let him, but they both cried while she tied the laces. I’m really sad. I keep looking around for Uncle K, like he’s going to be here because everyone’s going to be here. But he’s not here anymore.”
Daniel was suddenly, starkly grateful that Angie, for all her fussing over the way things were done, had named her son after their favorite uncle. Jessie’s little lip quivered, and her eyes filled with tears as her throat closed around a loss even grown-ups found difficult to voice. Heedless of her fancy black dress, Daniel went down on his heels and pulled her close. “I know, sweetheart. I know. It’s hard. We’re all going to miss him.”
She found tissues in her little-girl purse, dried her eyes, then handed him one. “Can I sit next to you?”
“Sure, peanut,” he said gently. Screw the pallbearer rules; if Jessie wanted to sit next to him, he’d make room. “I’ll sit at the end of the pew. Come on up after we sit down.”
Daniel couldn’t remember the homily, but he did remember the reflections from people who knew Kiernan well, and the weight of Jessie’s head on his arm as she burrowed into him for comfort. He’d zoned out during the last hymn, transfixed by the weak light illuminating the stained glass window above the cross. The last time he’d gone to church was the previous summer, when the light poured through the window with such strength the glass seemed to become light itself. Deep blues and garnet reds and shards of yellow fell on the stone floor, the priest moving in and out of the light as he said mass. During the lunch afterward, people looked for Tilda, extended family who hadn’t met her at Christmas. There was always a pause after he explained her absence.
What did Tilda do when members of her family died? She made contacts for people, introduced them, but he’d never once heard her talk about funerals. Funerals were like solstices, a tipping point, a change in angle to the earth’s tilt that meant seeing life in a different light; what was once powerful enough to transform the entire building’s atmosphere six months later was an afterthought. He thought about the difference between created and genuine, how people make sense until the light shifted and their real colors came through. He thought about the hidden coves and strips of beach in Cornwall, how the light poured down on them but only if you were willing to slip off a cliff and find them.
– SIXTEEN –
March
“Excuse me, miss. I need to speak to you privately.”
The low murmur lifted the hair on Tilda’s nape and sent a delicate shudder down her spine. She trusted that between the crowd around Sheba and her position in the dim light between spotlights in the Bleecker Street Gallery, no one noticed. “Hello, Daniel,” she said.
He stepped closer, wrapping his arm around her waist before he kissed her cheek. “Sorry I’m late,” he said. “I got caught up at work.”
“No worries,” she replied. “Did you get a glass of wine? Some hors d’oeuvres?”
“In a minute,” he said. “I haven’t seen much of you this week. When do you think this will let up?”
In the last month she’d been to Tokyo again, and on several conference calls at odd hours, adjusting for locations around the globe. As worn as the phrase was, she barely knew if she was coming or going. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “Probably around the same time your case does.”
He gave a huff of laughter. “Touché.”
His cheek pressed against her and his arms around her waist, he studied the piece in front of them. Sheba had taken one of her watercolor cathedral pieces of Saint John the Divine, sanded it down to rough paper, and layered it with text from her journal and sketches, covered that in a thin coat of something Tilda couldn’t identify, sanded that down, added another sketch from a different angle. The resulting picture showed Saint John the Divine from multiple angles and drew in the viewer while resisting any attempts to make a cohesive statement.
“What do you think?” she said. It felt so good to relax into him, feel him take her weight without moving, and know that this was solid ground.
“It’s interesting,” he said. “I’m not sure what to make of it, but I’m also intrigued enough to stand here and keep trying.”
She made a noncommittal noise and sipped her wine. He took the glass from her hand and tried it. “Nice,” he commented.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Colin watching them, his expression remarkably solemn for someone as young and naturally cheerful as he was. She didn’t complete the eye contact, focusing instead on Daniel’s hot, solid presence at her back. “Edith and I agreed that no matter how last millennium Sheba is, we would not skimp on the refreshments.”
“Looks like a good choice,” he said.
The turnout was astonishing. A line had queued up in front of the door before the opening, then social media worked to their advantage as people posted status updates and picture
s. With thirty minutes to closing the crowd had died down slightly. Tilda retreated to the background, watching the room’s dynamics, until Cole Fleming and Marin Bryant-Fleming made their way through the crowd to her. “Hello,” Tilda exclaimed with a smile. She leaned in to exchange a quick kiss with Marin and then another one with Cole. She introduced Daniel to Cole and Marin, and shook her head in denial when Marin told Daniel how grateful she was to Tilda for the introduction that changed her life. The two men left to track down more wine, and left Tilda and Marin standing in front of one of the biggest works in the show, a reworked representation of Central Park that featured the Met in winter, bare branches, black-painted iron railings, and curving paths.
Marin’s blond head gleamed under the spotlights. “Thanks for the invitation,” she said. She looked around the gallery. “The works are absolutely amazing. I’ve never seen anything like this before, and I feel like we’re in on the ground floor of what will be an amazing retrospective of her career.”
“Did you find something you couldn’t live without?”
“Oh, yes,” Marin said with the satisfaction of a woman who feels that she’s gotten a very, very good deal. She tipped her head at the image to their left. A discreet Sold sticker had been affixed to a card Tilda printed for each piece, listing the work’s title, medium, and price. “Don’t tell Cole, but I bought that one for him. His apartment growing up overlooked the Met, and the Egyptian-themed playground. It’s a surprise for his birthday next month.”
Once again, Marin looked blissfully happy. Daniel and Cole returned with glasses of wine, and Daniel also cradled a napkin holding crackers, cheese, and a few grapes. They chatted for a few minutes and then Marin and Cole made their way to the gallery’s glass door.