Chapter 23
1080 Words
ELENA
The delivery arrived at eleven.
Petra brought it to my office with the expression she reserved for things that fell outside her established categories — a container of soup still warm, plain crackers, fresh fruit, a bottle of still water. No restaurant logo on the bag. No receipt. Nothing that explained itself.
Just a card.
Thank you for the art. — N
I looked at it for a long moment.
Then I picked up my phone.
I was going to leave a voicemail. Nicholas Carter who didn't have spare time for calls from gallery directors thanking him for lunch.
He answered on the second ring.
"Carter."
"I was expecting voicemail," I said.
He chuckled a bit.
I looked at the card on my desk. "Thank you for the lunch. You didn't have to."
"Did you eat breakfast?"
"That's not—" I stopped. "No."
"Then eat," he said.
I pulled the soup toward me. It was homemade — I could tell immediately. The broth clear and clean, nothing complicated. It's the kind of thing made in a kitchen rather than ordered from one. I looked at the bag again. No logo. No restaurant.
"Nicholas." I said it carefully. "Did you make this?"
He went quiet. The kind that was deciding something.
"It's not complicated," he said.
I set my spoon down.
"Liam said you never cook," I said. "That you don't know how."
The silence that followed was not uncomfortable. Nicholas is a man who chose words before speaking them.
"Liam says a lot of things," he said.
"Are you at the office?" I said. Because I could hear it — faintly, underneath the quiet. The television. Nicholas Carter did not have the television on at Carter Group.
"No," he said.
"You're at home."
"Yes."
The soup was exactly right. It was warm and simple and precisely what a pregnant woman needed at eleven in the morning after skipping breakfast and sleeping badly at the Carlyle for the third week running.
"I'm eating the same thing," he said.
I sat with that for a moment. Nicholas at home on a Wednesday with the television on, eating soup he made himself and sent half of to my gallery with a note about art.
"Why?" I said.
"I made too much," he said.
Such a precise non-answer. So entirely him.
"Elena."
His voice dropped slightly. The register it took when he had decided to say something and was saying it directly.
"The security on your street," he said. "And outside the gallery. Don't be alarmed by it."
I went very still.
"That's yours," I said.
He didn't answer. Which was its own answer.
I looked at the window. At the man in the dark coat I had been filing for a week, always reading something and never looking directly at me.
Nicholas had arranged it. Without telling me. Without asking.
He had simply done it.
"When?" I said.
"Not too long ago," he said.
"Why?" I said.
The silence lasted longer this time.
"Because someone should have," he said quietly. Then he said, "Finish your soup. You have the installation opening Friday."
He hung up.
**
The door opened twenty minutes later.
Isla walked in with a bag from the place on Lexington.
She stopped in the doorway and looked at the soup.
Then she looked at me, back at the soup again.
"I brought lunch," she said.
"I can see that," I said.
"You already have lunch."
"Yes."
She came in anyway. Set her bag on the chair across from my desk and started unpacking — a proper meal, something warm, considerably more elaborate than what was in front of me. She pulled up the chair and sat down and looked at my desk.
"Where did that come from?" she said.
I picked up the card and held it out without saying anything.
She took it. Read it. Turned it over. Looked at the soup. Looked at the bag with no logo. Looked at me.
Set the card down slowly.
"N," she said.
"Nicholas Carter," I said.
"Still your brother in law."
"For now."
She picked the card back up. Read it again as if it might say something different the second time.
Thank you for the art. — N
"He sent you soup," she said.
"He's a client. He's bought three pieces from the gallery in the past two months. The Solis prints. The Brennan. The Mäkinen series."
"Three pieces," she said.
"He has good taste."
"Elena." She set the card down and looked at me. "Clients send wine. Not homemade soup."
"We don't know it's homemade."
But I knew. I am not telling her that though.
She looked at the bag. No logo. No receipt. Looked back at me.
"We know," she said.
I said nothing.
She picked up the card one more time. Held it. Looked at it. Then she set it down with the particular care of someone placing something significant on a surface and looked at me with the full force of twenty years of friendship.
"I think you married the wrong brother," she said.
I rolled my eyes. Shook my head.
"Eat your lunch, Isla."
"I'm just saying—"
"I know what you're saying."
She tapped the card once. "This man is not thanking you for the art."
"Isla."
"I'm eating." She picked up her fork. "I'm not saying anything."
She was absolutely saying something.
"Did you call to say thank you?" Isla said eventually. Still not looking at me. Still focused on her food.
"I called to leave a voicemail," I said.
"Did he answer?"
The pause was a fraction too long and we both knew it.
"He answered," I said.
Isla said nothing.
She smiled at her food and said absolutely nothing. I picked up my soup and finished it.
**
After Isla left I started working. The soup helped my mood. It was light and yet it made me full. I want to think my baby liked it too.
I was almost done for the day when my phone buzzed.
Unknown number. One message.
He made contact tonight. The same number. Be careful.
I stared at the screen.
The man in the dark coat on my street suddenly making a very different kind of sense.
Then my phone buzzed again once I arrived at Carlyle.
Same number.
This time no words. Just an image.
The Carlyle. Front entrance. Tonight. Me. Walking in.
I picked up my phone and called Nicholas.
- Writer
