CHAPTER 4 — BREAKING POINTS
1097 Words
POV: Yessica | Location: New York
The Harrington dinner was three days after the anniversary.
Lewis mentioned it Tuesday morning with the same tone he used to mention board meetings — logistical, assumed, her attendance implied without being requested.
"Eight o'clock. Le Bernardin. David Harrington and his wife. Wear something appropriate."
She wore the navy dress. Had her hair done. Sat in the car beside him while he reviewed notes on his phone and didn't look at her once on the thirty-minute drive.
The silver box was still on the guest room nightstand.
She'd moved it to the drawer.
Le Bernardin was the kind of restaurant that cost enough to make ordinary people feel grateful to be there. Yessica had stopped feeling grateful for these rooms somewhere in her second year of marriage.
She smiled at the right moments. Said the right things.
"Mrs. Sterling, you look radiant," David Harrington said.
"Thank you." She took her seat.
The chair beside Lewis was empty. Set for a fourth person who hadn't arrived yet.
"Are we waiting for someone?" she said.
"Regina." Lewis didn't look up. "She's presenting part of the pitch."
Of course she is.
Regina arrived fifteen minutes late — which was, Yessica had learned, a calculated move. Arrival before the hosts looked eager; arrival after looked important. Regina never did anything without calculation.
She was in red. Tailored, deliberate, the colour of a woman who had decided to be noticed.
She took the empty chair beside Lewis. "I'm so sorry — traffic was impossible." She touched Lewis's arm briefly. "Did I miss anything?"
"Just the amuse-bouche," Lewis said. His voice was different. Less careful. The voice he used with people he was comfortable around.
Yessica had stopped being one of those people without noticing exactly when.
The dinner moved through its courses. Appetisers and market analysis. Mains and projected returns. Yessica ate her scallops and smiled at Miranda Harrington's questions about charity work and said the arts council because it required the least follow-up.
"The Singapore expansion is brilliant," Miranda said. "Lewis, you've really outdone yourself."
"It's a team effort." Lewis glanced at Regina. "Regina's been instrumental."
Regina smiled. The particular smile of someone accepting a compliment they'd expected. "Lewis makes it easy. His vision is extraordinary."
Yessica watched them.
The easy shorthand. The way they finished each other's context. The specific comfort of two people who spent ten hours a day together and had stopped performing for one another.
She pressed her hand to her lap. To her stomach.
Eight weeks and four days.
"How do you manage, Yessica?" Miranda was looking at her with the warm concern of a woman who saw everything. "With Lewis so busy?"
"I stay occupied," Yessica said.
"With what, if you don't mind me asking?"
Hours of waiting. The guest room ceiling. The pregnancy test I haven't told my husband about. The folder on my phone labelled Edinburgh.
"Charity work," she said. "The arts council."
"How lovely." Miranda smiled. "Children help, I find. Having something that's entirely yours. Are you and Lewis planning—"
"We're focused on the company right now," Lewis said smoothly. "Children can wait."
Children can wait.
Said like a calendar item. Like she hadn't been lying awake for four days with a silver box in her drawer and a heartbeat she was already in love with.
"Wise," Regina said. "Children should come when you've built something stable." The pause after it was precisely one second. Long enough to imply instability without saying it.
Yessica set her fork down.
"Excuse me," she said.
The bathroom at Le Bernardin was marble and mirrors and a couch in the anteroom that cost more than most people's monthly rent. Yessica locked herself in a stall and stood very still.
She pulled the ultrasound picture from her clutch.
The tiny shape. Eight weeks. Already loved.
Children can wait.
She heard the bathroom door open. Heels on marble. Two voices she recognized.
"—honestly, I don't know what Lewis sees in her." Regina. The warmth she performed at the table was gone. This was her actual voice. "She's pretty enough."
"Vacant," Miranda said. The word was almost affectionate, the way women were sometimes cruel with each other. "Like a doll."
"Lewis deserves someone who challenges him. Who understands his world."
"Someone like you?"
A laugh. "I'm not saying that. But hypothetically? We work well together. Catherine approves."
"Does Lewis know how you feel?"
"He's married. I respect that." A pause. "But marriages end, Miranda. Especially when they're—" Another pause. Considered. "Mismatched."
The bathroom door opened and closed.
They were gone.
Yessica stood in the stall for a long time.
Then she folded the ultrasound picture. Put it back in her clutch. Fixed her lipstick in the mirror.
Looked at herself.
Vacant. Like a doll.
She'd heard worse from Catherine. But hearing it from Regina — Lewis's perfect colleague, his mother's preferred candidate, the woman who sat beside him at dinner while his wife was in the bathroom — landed differently.
It stuck in a way Catherine's cruelty never had.
Because Catherine's opinion was biased by ambition.
Regina's was biased by desire.
Which meant Regina had looked at Yessica and found nothing worth keeping. Had measured her against Lewis and found a gap.
And Lewis had said nothing.
She walked back to the table.
The Harringtons were pleased. The deal was progressing. Lewis was engaged and animated in the way he rarely was at home.
No one noticed she'd been gone twelve minutes.
The drive back was quiet. Lewis on email. Yessica watching New York slide past.
"That went well," Lewis said, not looking up.
"Mm."
"Harrington's almost ready to sign. This could change everything for the expansion."
Us. He always meant the company.
"Lewis." She kept her voice level. "We need to talk."
"Can it wait? I have to respond to this before Tokyo opens."
"It's important."
"So is this." His phone rang.
Regina.
Her name lit up the screen between them. Lewis looked at the phone. Looked at Yessica. And in the half-second of that look, she saw him calculate — the call, the contracts, Tokyo, her — and she saw exactly where she landed in that calculation.
He answered.
"Regina, hey—"
Yessica looked out the window.
The silver box was in her drawer.
The folder on her phone was called Edinburgh.
She'd been about to tell him.
She pressed her hand to her stomach under her coat.
Not tonight.
Not ever, maybe.
Not until she understood what she was giving her daughter to.
- Writer
