Chapter 4 — The Empty Suit

I looked at the tuxedo, then at the woman holding it.

"You want your former husband standing beside the man you're marrying."

"I want tomorrow to go smoothly."

"For whom?"

Vivian shifted the hanger. The plastic cover whispered against her coat.

"We don't have to turn everything into a fight."

Behind me, on the desk, the book lay open beneath a lamp. I had spent nine days trying to find a way around the sentence waiting on October 24.

Now she was offering me a costume for it.

I took the bag.

"I'll be ready."

Her shoulders lowered a fraction.

"Eleven thirty. The coordinator will tell you where to stand."

Of course someone would.

She glanced past me, perhaps considering whether to come inside. I kept my hand on the door.

"I'll see you tomorrow," she said.

I lifted my fingers in a small wave.

She watched the movement. Then she turned away.

I closed the door and called Nora.

She brought Maisie over after dinner. While my daughter built a nest for her rabbit from the cushions, we went through the folder together.

School contacts. Health records. The bedtime routine, including the ridiculous requirement that the closet be checked for a bear who apparently preferred shoes to honey.

"I know most of this," Nora said gently.

"I know you do."

"Then what's the extra copy for?"

"So nobody can tell you I never gave you the information."

She studied me before putting it in her bag.

My lawyer already had the revised arrangements and instructions about the money I had set aside for Maisie's expenses. Nothing about the divorce made Theo her father. Nothing I signed said otherwise.

But paper couldn't tuck a child into bed.

"You'll stay with her tomorrow?"

"All day."

"And afterward?"

"I'm not going anywhere, Julian."

Maisie appeared between us with a cushion clasped to her chest.

"The bear can live here," she announced.

I crouched slowly, careful of my hip.

"Very generous of you."

"But you have to feed him."

"What does he eat?"

She thought hard.

"The shoes you don't like."

I laughed. The sound surprised all three of us.

Later, she sat beside me while I drew a bear wearing one enormous boot. She added purple rain. When Nora said it was time to leave, Maisie asked if she could keep the picture.

I wrote her name on the back.

Not goodbye. I couldn't put that weight into her hands.

After they left, I recorded a message and sent it to Nora to keep for her.

"Hey, bug. If you ever wonder whether you said something wrong, you didn't. Grown-up problems belong to grown-ups. You don't have to fix them. I love you, even on days when you can't see me."

I stopped before my voice broke.

That night, I copied my latest work notes into the recovered sketchbooks. I wasn't sure whether memory would cross with me. I wasn't sure anything would.

Leaving Maisie frightened me more than dying had.

I opened the book to every remaining mention of her. Preschool. Her rabbit. A summer birthday still ahead. None of those passages depended on my being at a wedding.

The endpaper warned that departure was not closure.

I understood only that staying would kill me, and a dead father couldn't check a closet either.

At dawn, I tried on the tuxedo.

The sleeves were too long.

Vivian had ordered the size I used to wear.

I took it off, folded it on the bed, and put on my own clothes. The blue book rested beside the white shirt like another item waiting to be returned.

I went through the apartment once. Closed the windows. Put the care folder's spare copy on the table. Left my phone where someone would find it.

Then I sat down.

This time I didn't write that Vivian loved me, or that I would recover, or that someone else would choose differently.

I wrote the decision I had already made.

I give up the part of Julian Ashford. I am going home.

The ink stayed.

Heat spread beneath my palm. A pale blue line traveled outward from the sentence, passing over the old print without burning the paper.

For a moment, I could see the grain of the desk through my fingers.

I wanted to lift my hand.

Instead, I kept it there.

The harbor vanished beyond the window.

* * *

At eleven forty, Vivian asked the coordinator to check the entrance again.

Theo stood beneath the glass roof, laughing too loudly with a guest. Maisie had gone to the quiet room with Nora. Somewhere, a musician kept playing the same passage, then stopping before its resolution.

Vivian checked her phone.

No message.

She called Julian. It rang until voicemail answered.

"Is he coming?" Theo asked when she returned to the aisle.

"Of course."

But she remembered his hand lifting at the apartment door.

No bitterness. No request.

She had mistaken it for cooperation.

"We need to begin," the coordinator said.

Vivian looked at the place where Julian was supposed to stand.

The first notes of the processional started.

She turned and walked toward the exit.

Theo caught up with her in the corridor.

"If you leave now—"

"Nora has Maisie. Tell her I'll call."

She was already reaching for her coat.

At Julian's building, she rang until another resident opened the street door. Upstairs, the apartment was silent.

Her old key was no longer on her ring.

She called the building superintendent, explained his recent hospital visits, and waited beside the door while he came up to check.

Inside, nothing had fallen. No broken glass, no overturned furniture.

The superintendent called out Julian's name and checked the rooms.

Vivian stopped at the bed.

The tuxedo lay folded, the shirt beneath it. Beside them was the book she had watched him read for weeks.

She opened it.

Blank paper slid beneath her thumb.

Page after page.

On the table, his phone started ringing in answer to the call she had forgotten to end.

* * *

I woke with my hand curled around a bedsheet.

There was a crack above the light fixture. A laundry basket stood where it always had, partly blocking the closet.

I touched my chin.

The scar was there.

"Owen?"

My mother's voice came through the door.

I got up too quickly, expecting my legs to fail.

They held.

When I opened the door, Ruth Mercer stood there with a mug in each hand.

"You all right?"

I took the mugs from her, set them down, and folded myself around her.

"Owen, honey. What happened?"

For five years, nobody had called me that.

"It's me," I said against her shoulder. "I'm Owen."