Ten Days To Say I Do

Chapter 9

Jay came out of the kitchen drying his hands on the dish towel.

He did it slowly, one finger at a time, and Elena noticed that because she was noticing everything. The tap dripping. The clock in the hall. Victor's thumb, still resting on the edge of his phone.

"Everything okay out here?" Jay asked.

"Wonderful," Victor said. "I was just showing Elena something. Come and look. I'd love your opinion."

He held the phone out. Jay took it, and Elena watched his face, because she couldn't not. She waited for the flinch, the panic, any of it.

It didn't come. He looked at the photo for maybe three seconds. Then he exhaled through his nose, half a laugh, and handed it back.

"Oh, that's great," he said. "Where did you get that?"

"You tell me."

"That's Julian." Jay tapped the little circled face. "My cousin. God, he looks so young in that one. I'd forgotten about the haircut."

Nobody said anything.

Elena felt the floor tilt a little to the left.

"Your cousin," Victor said.

"Julian Sterling. Yes." Jay leaned against the wall, arms crossed, perfectly relaxed. "Everyone says we look alike. Same jaw, same nose. My grandmother used to say it was the one thing the family couldn't argue about. It's a pain, honestly. People stop me in hotels."

"Kessler," Elena heard herself say. "That's why he thought he knew you."

"Probably." Jay glanced at her and there was something in his face she couldn't read. An apology, maybe. "I'm sorry. I should have told you. I just didn't think it would come up."

"A Sterling," Victor said slowly. He said it like he was tasting it. "You're telling me you're a Sterling, and you've been calling yourself Just Jay."

"I'm telling you I'm the Sterling who left." Jay's voice went flat. "My father and I stopped speaking six years ago. I walked out, he cut me off, and the family closed ranks. I don't use the name because the name comes with a lot of people wanting things. Which, no offense, you're doing right now."

It was a good answer. Elena could hear how good it was. That was almost the problem.

Victor didn't look convinced, but he didn't look sure of himself either. His jaw worked once. "I'll be checking."

"Please do," Jay said. "Call anyone you like. Just don't expect them to be nice about me."

Diane's voice rang down the hall. "Did somebody say Sterling? Not the Sterlings? The hospital Sterlings?"

"Mom," Victor said, without taking his eyes off Jay, "go back to your napkins."

They left a few minutes later. Elena didn't really remember saying goodbye. She remembered Duchess barking, and Diane pressing a Tupperware of lasagna into Jay's hands as if it could fix everything, and the cold hitting her face on the front steps like a slap.

She didn't say anything in the taxi for the first four blocks.

Jay didn't either. He watched the window. Streetlights slid across his face and off again.

"Say it," he said finally.

"Is the new CEO at Halden your cousin?"

He didn't pretend not to understand. That, at least, she gave him credit for later. He turned his head, and for a moment he looked so tired, so completely used up, that she nearly took it back.

"Yes," he said.

"Julian Sterling. Mr. Sterling. The one nobody's seen." Her voice was rising and she couldn't seem to stop it. "The one who's about to walk into my building and decide if I still have a job."

"Elena."

"You knew that the first day. At the bus stop, when I said where I worked. You went white."

"I didn't go white."

"You dropped your coffee. Almost."

He rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand. "Okay. Yes. I was surprised. I hadn't heard he was running Halden. I hadn't spoken to him in six years, so I had no idea. I found out the same way you did. From a rumor."

"You found out, and you stayed."

"I'd already said yes!"

"You could have told me then."

"And you'd have said what? Go away? You needed someone." He said it quietly. "I thought, what's the harm. He doesn't know me anymore. He doesn't care what I'm doing. It's a bookshop and a lawyer and a few dinners. He'll never even find out."

"He might find out tomorrow. Everyone's got a camera. Diane's posting pictures."

"I know."

"I could lose my job over this."

"I know." He turned fully toward her. "If you want me to walk, I will. Right now. Stop the car. I'll get out and you can call the lawyer and tell him whatever you like. I won't say a word. But Elena, I swear to you, he has no reason to hurt you. Whatever he is, he's not like that."

She stared at him.

That was a strange thing to say about a man he hadn't spoken to in six years.

But the taxi was warm, and he looked wrecked, and she was so tired of being the only person in her own life who had to be strong. And the truth was, there was no one else. Six days left. If Jay left now, she'd have to start again at nothing.

"Don't stop the car," she said.

His shoulders came down an inch. "Okay."

"But no more surprises. Nothing. If there's anything else, anything at all, you tell me now."

He looked at her for a long time.

"There's nothing else," he said.

She wanted to believe it. She did, mostly. It was the mostly that kept her awake.

The taxi pulled up outside her building. Jay got out first and held the door, and she stood on the pavement in her heavy sweater with the Tupperware in her arms, feeling ridiculous.

"Get some sleep," he said. "I'll see you tomorrow."

"Tomorrow."

"I'm sorry, Elena. I mean it."

"I know."

She went up the steps. At the top she turned, because she couldn't help it, and found that he hadn't left yet. He was still standing beside the taxi with his phone out. He'd turned his back to her, shoulders hunched against the cold, and he was talking low and fast.

She wasn't trying to listen. The street was just very quiet.

"No. I'm done with the dinner. Pull everything on Brenner and have it on my desk by six." A pause. Then, sharper: "Tell Ruth I want to see her before anyone else comes in."

Elena stopped breathing.

He hung up. He stood there for a second with his head down, and then he climbed into the taxi and was gone.

Ruth.

It was a common name. There were probably thousands of Ruths in the city. She told herself that twice, standing alone on her own front steps with a cold lasagna and a ring on her finger that wasn't hers.

But only one of them worked on the twelfth floor.

And how did a man who hadn't spoken to his cousin in six years know his cousin's chief of staff well enough to give her orders?