Page 18 of Neglected By Her CEO Husband

"Fine. My wife's gone quiet."

She tilted her head. "Quiet how?"

"She's not answering. She doesn't do that."

Emily settled back onto the edge of the desk and pulled the printouts toward her. "I'm sure it's nothing. People get busy." She found her place in the numbers without looking up. "Probably on a shopping trip or something."

There was nothing biting in the words. They were neutral, and I told myself I was imagining anything else.

We worked another hour. When she finally stretched and reached for her shoes, she did it slowly.

"We could keep going over dinner," she said. "That place on Wilkins still does the late table. Do you remember how we practically lived there?"

For a second I was going to say yes. Then the phone lit up on the desk, and it was Reese, not Maddie, and I put it down.

"Another night," I said. "I should get home."

Emily looked at me a moment, then shrugged and let it go.

I gathered my things and put the phone in my breast pocket so I'd feel it if it buzzed. It didn't.

The house was dark when I got home. No dinner smell, no kitchen light, no Maddie on the stairs. I called her name in the front hall. I couldn't remember the last time I'd had to. Nothing came back.

Then I saw it. A line of light under a door at the far end of the east hall. The studio. I'd had it built for her our first year, and I couldn't have told you the last time the light was on in it. Music, low, behind the door. I stood on the cold floor and looked at the strip of it on the boards. A shadow passed over the light, and I realized she was in there. Painting.

In eight years Maddie had never let my call go to voicemail. I couldn't remember the last time Maddie had been in that studio.

A part of me wanted to knock, to ask why the hell she'd been ignoring my calls, but I didn't. Some conversations were better off had in the morning.

11

MADDIE

The show had been up for two days, and on the second Ellie put out cheap wine and good cheese and let the gallery fill with whoever wanted to look again. I'd come at six. I hadn't planned to stay long but I kept staying.

I talked to the brass-animal sculptor for half an hour about a commission he had no intention of taking. I watched a woman stand in front of the empty-pool photographs until she had to wipe her eyes. Someone asked what I thought of a piece and listened to the answer. At the Sterling parties I'd worked the room like a job, because it was one. Here I just stood in front of things and let them work on me. I'd lost the knack for that somewhere, and it was coming back.

There was a new piece up since the opening, a small oil of a kitchen window with the blind half down. I stood in front of it longer than was polite. Whoever made it had caught the late light going thick and gold through a dirty pane. Standing there, I wanted to go home and ruin a canvas trying to do the same. The wanting was sharp, and it surprised me.

Someone asked which pieces were mine. I had to say none and felt more regret than I'd expected. I told myself by the time Spring rolled around, I'd have no regrets left.

Kellan found me in front of his bus painting, the one I'd told him to lead with. There was a red dot on the card now.

"It sold," I said.

"Some collector. Buys nothing but sad paintings, Ellie says." He stood next to me and looked at it with me. "You were right about the order. I hate that you were right about the order."

"They're good, Kellan. The bus especially. You painted the tiredness in the back of the man's neck. Most people would've painted the bus."

"That's the nicest thing anyone's said about it, and a stranger paid me real money for it tonight."

"Take the compliment and the money."

"I'm taking both." He refilled my glass without asking. "So what are you making? And don't say nothing. You've had that look all night, like you keep almost talking about it."

"A window. I always come back to windows." I turned the glass in my hand. "The one in my studio at home. The afternoon light comes in wrong, and every time I try to paint it, it keeps going flat on me."

"The wrong light's the whole painting. Don't fix it. Whatever's flattening it is you trying to make it nice." He shrugged. "Nice is the enemy. You should know that better than anyone."