What He's Been Hiding

Chapter 2

Claire was almost at the elevator when she heard the loud crash. Something had shattered loudly.

She paused. She was off the clock. She didn't need to concern herself with what happened beyond the glass wall, nor did she want to. She knew she didn't have to, but it was clear it was serious in the office. Leaving and deciding against looking in this situation felt wrong - the type of situation that would cause her to be up at 2 AM, lying in bed, regretting her life choices and wondering if she greatly miscalculated and should have gone back.

As she made her way back to the office, the dimmed hallway lights reset to activate with her motion, flickering on, one at a time. What she could see through the glass was an office filled with a tense James. He had one hand on the phone and the other flattened on the desk, and the glass partition showed how strained he looked.

Walking into the office, she found him worse than he'd looked through the glass - gripping the edge of his desk with both hands, a shattered picture frame scattered near his feet. The glass sparkled under the desk lamp, and it seemed like he placed the phone on his desk gently instead of dropping it.

"James?"

He straightened up, a movement that cost him a little something; she saw something in him before he smoothed it out again, a little bit of wavering steadiness that he quickly buried under a mask of impenetrable calm. “I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine.”

“Long day.” He squatted down and began picking at the shards of broken glass with his bare hands. She crossed the room without thinking and squatted down to do it with him.

“You’re going to cut yourself.”

“Claire—”

“I’ll get a bag.” She was already moving toward the little kitchen that was down the hall. She was already deciding this wouldn’t be a conversation she would win by standing still and waiting for him to explain himself. She came back with a dustpan and a paper towel and saw he had stopped picking glass and was sitting at the edge of his desk with one hand pressed against his eyes, breathing like he was silently counting to something.

She began sweeping and he didn’t stop her, which told her more than anything he could have said.

“You don’t have to talk about it,” she said, dumping the last glass into the dustbin. “But I’m not pretending I didn’t hear it.”

“I know.” He looked at her, something unguarded flickering behind his eyes before he caught it and locked it up. “Thank you. For not asking twice.”

“I asked once.”

“You did.” Almost a smile. Not quite. “Goodnight, Claire.”

She left knowing just as little as before. She learned that whatever had been shattered in that office was more than just glass. That whatever was in the broken frame, if she could look beyond the frame and beyond the glass, would maybe give her more than what he wanted her to know.

The day after, everything was back to normal. James was at his desk, ready for the day, and had already prepared and flagged a new pile of documents in his classic handwriting. If she didn’t know that she had swept up the glass from the broken frame, she might have believed the office was back to normal.

But she knew, and she was watching everything James was doing, even what he was doing when he thought no one was looking.

He was quiet; maybe too quiet, and instead of talking to her, he was just looking and listening to everything. He had two cups of coffee before ten, and when Daniel offered a granola bar, he waved it off and went back to whatever he was doing. Daniel didn’t seem to notice, but Claire did. He had dark bags under his eyes, and while they were reviewing, he lost his place and had to start the entire thing over again, which was the most un-James thing Claire had seen in three weeks of reviewing everything with near perfection.

By the afternoon, he seemed to be looking better, sounding better. The color had returned to his face, and Claire thought maybe the worst of it hadn’t been as bad as she feared. Maybe it was just a bad night. Maybe the broken picture frame was just the broken picture frame, and she was reading more into things than there was. Then he excused himself from a two o'clock meeting — his own meeting — for exactly six minutes, and came back looking recalibrated.

The way he'd come back from those six minutes sharp and focused felt too precise to be a coincidence — like he was running on a schedule only he knew the rules of. Nothing about it screamed illness, and nothing about it added up to anything she could name. It just didn’t sit right, like a room you know well with the furniture moved an inch to the left.

She had been smart enough to not poke the beast and had only been more watchful of him. She kept her mouth shut and went back to what she had been doing before.

Wednesday was the first time it proved to be an advantage. She was the first to notice one of the meeting conflicts the boards had had. Two of the board members had been double booked to a meeting with a Japanese investment partner the time zone math handled by a poor soul who must have been the one to completely forget the shifts of the daylight savings. While she was checking the meetings for the upcoming week, she caught it and fixed the problem before anyone on the team had to deal with a dumpster fire, and moved the meeting without making a big deal about what she had done for them. She never brought it up with James. That's something you don't get credit for. You don't get points for self-reporting.

James learned about it anyway. During the Thursday morning meeting, Patricia spent four sentences on it, and made it seem like a minor miracle.

It started with an investor two days later, calling in all riled up about some shipment issues telling James to pick up his phone and with the kind of crisp, razor-edged, merciless frustration of a man who has never had to wait for anything in his life, Claire could hear him over the phone from three feet away. James was trapped in meeting after meeting and would be for some time, so Claire stepped in, giving the furious investor a full two minutes to calm himself while she mentally cataloged all his claims, then one at a time, explained the reasons for the shipment issues and the delays while doing everything she could to make it seem like there was no reason for him to still be angry about it.

James emerged from meeting, and after hearing what happened, all he said was, "You didn't need me for that."

"No, I didn't," Claire replied.

Something in him settled, like a theory he'd been quietly testing had finally gotten its answer. For the rest of the day, he started handing her things without explaining them first, trusting her to fill in the gaps herself. She did, every time.

The private investor dinner was on GridPulse's launch horizon, where relationships would be cultivated in a room where the tables had no customers, only an abundance of waitstaff. James didn't have many people he trusted like this. Claire was becoming one of them. He chose Claire to track the promises made when negotiating over wine so he wouldn't have to deal with forgotten commitment emails.

It was the last thing she was looking forward to, but it was an unexpectedly fun evening. There was a warm, dim atmosphere that came from the low flames, contrasting the many overlapping, relaxing conversations. She could feel the tension dissolve when James would lighten the mood with asides so dry, he was even able to get comments past the waitstaff.

He leaned closer to her and secretly told her about the man across the table’s tie and she almost died of choking on her water trying to suppress it.

Their conversation was starting to become an actual fight over grid regulation policy. One of the investors had gone red in the face, and the other was folding his arms to express his lack of agreement with the point, which also happened to be a completely different point. Claire was absolutely on it, and managed to cover the argument with a smooth segue that brought their attention to a story about the GridPulse pilot program. James, on the other side of the table, smiled and thought of her with what he later recognized as affection.

"You have a talent for this kind of thing," he said when the table had calmed down again and was playfully bickering about the selection of dessert.

"De-escalating dangerous or volatile men? It's a skill I have had to practice."

"I'm complimenting your ability to adjust to the situation."

"I am aware."

This was enough to really get a laugh out of James that caught other members of their table off guard. And Claire, feeling completely at ease, let that feeling linger for the length of the dessert course.

Richard Voss found her at the bar while James and the investment partner were finalizing the last of their business deal.

"Ms. Bennett," Richard said, smiling and swirling his drink. "James is lucky to have you. Not everyone can keep up with him."

"I try to earn my paycheck."

“More than that.” There was a brief pause after his comment, his smile still in place, only this time every part of his focus was elsewhere. “Hasn’t he been looking tired lately?”

Claire worked to keep her expression blank. “Tired? He’s just busy. We’re getting to the close of the launch.”

“Mm.” Richard swirled the murky brown contents of his glass, his head nodding slowly. “He’s always had a talent for knowing the right time to look less than his best. Some things stick with you.”

Claire went very still.

Tired and busy weren't words Claire had ever heard James use about himself, and she wasn't about to hand Richard either one now. Nevertheless, Richard spoke to her under the presumption that James had reasons to hide things. Richard spoke to her like he had probably been living with James. Like he had spent years with James, probably seeing patterns, and was sharing some of the things he had seen in James to help her understand the man she was unsure she was ever going to get to know.

“You’ve known him a long time,” Claire chose her following words very carefully.

“Since he was your age.” Richard’s smile widened, but a chill had slipped behind. “I’d imagine with time you’ll figure that out whether you want to or not.”

“I have to get back,” she said. “He’ll be needing the car.”

“Of course.” Richard’s smile remained. “It was a pleasure, Claire.”

He hadn’t called her that before. She believed she didn't give it to him tonight, not directly. And the small, conscious intimacy of it felt wrong in her stomach during the entire walk back.

There was silence during the car ride back, the city lights reflecting off the windows with the privacy screen blocking the driver, the engine creating a low background noise. James probably looked the most relaxed he had all week, his tie loosened and his head leaned back on the seat with his eyes closed most of the way.

"You were good tonight."

"So were you."

"I usually don't enjoy those dinners."

"You did a pretty good job at hiding it."

"I got a little bit of help." He looked at her with a tired warm gaze and no more thought, just friendly and uncomplicated. "Can I ask you something?"

"Depends."

"Why paralegal work? You're better with people than half the lawyers I've met."

She focused her thoughts and the passing city on the long and narrow view rather than the short, direct view of him at his side. "My mom got sick right when I was finishing my degree. I needed steady income fast, not four more years of school. Paralegal work paid the bills now. Law school would've paid off eventually — but eventually doesn't cover this month's rent."

"Is she okay? Your Mom."

“Getting there. Slowly.” Claire looked out the window, surprised at her own bluntness, having spoken for the first time in months. “What about you? Anyone waiting for you? Anyone wondering why the CEO is breaking picture frames on a Tuesday?”

It looked like he would be quiet long enough for her to take the question back, and the silence was long enough for her to start to regret the question. Finally, he said, “No. Not anymore.”

She didn’t want to pressure him, so she was content with the quiet he deserved. It felt good to not feel the need to push harder.

The car came to a stop along the curb in front of her apartment building. “Goodnight, James.”

“Goodnight, Claire.”

She was almost to her building's door when she glanced back and saw him still watching from the car, phone lit in his hand, his expression gone suddenly still. Whatever was on that screen had taken all the ease of the evening and replaced it with something colder.

The car pulled away. He didn’t look up again.