Something Sweet

On Christmas Eve, Clara woke at nine in the evening with her boots still on.

She had meant to rest for twenty minutes.

Her suitcase stood open on the floor. Half her clothes were inside it; the other half lay in a heap beside a folder of marked-up plans. The room was quiet in the way hotel rooms became quiet when everybody else had gone somewhere to belong.

She sat up too quickly and checked her phone.

No missed calls.

She rang Owen.

"What time is the car coming?"

He paused.

"Damian didn't pick you up?"

"Was he supposed to?"

"He said he would. On the phone."

She remembered irritation, music, the urgent little clock on her screen. Nothing about being collected.

In the Grand Briar lobby, Owen turned as Vince strode past him with three men.

"Where are you going?"

"We found him. Taking him to Damian."

Owen covered the receiver a second too late.

"Found who?" Clara asked.

"I'll send a car now."

"Owen."

"It'll take three hours."

"And three back. I'll drive."

She stood, suddenly wide awake.

"Don't tell him I'm coming."

"I have the year-end accounts to finish," Owen said after a thoughtful silence. "I may be difficult to reach."

***

The road was dry.

Clara drove with music playing softly and watched the city lights thin into long stretches of dark.

It was the first quiet she had allowed herself in weeks. Without a deadline in front of her, she could finally think about something other than the next item on a list.

Her husband had been strangely absent.

That was what she had wanted, wasn't it? Room to work. Room to breathe. A life that didn't turn around another person's mood.

She had found that life after Julian.

Or perhaps she had found it because Damian had made space for it, then stood at the edge waiting to be invited in.

She tightened her hands on the wheel.

The thought didn't excuse Vince outside her office. It didn't settle Ethan's death or the argument by the bathroom.

It did make her wish she had let Damian finish his sentence.

Just after midnight she parked outside the Nightingale Club.

Owen met her at the side entrance.

"Is he upstairs?"

"Yes."

"And the man Vince found?"

Owen adjusted his glasses.

"Clara, perhaps you should let me—"

She was already walking.

The private room smelled of smoke, spilled liquor, and something sharper.

A heavyset man knelt beside an overturned chair. His shirt was torn. One hand pressed a folded towel against his arm.

Vince stood over him.

Damian sat on the sofa, dressed in black, a cigarette angled between two fingers. A knife lay on the low table within his reach.

The kneeling man was crying.

"I'll refund it. Every cent. Please. I didn't know what would happen."

"You knew what you sold," Vince said.

Damian rose.

He picked up the knife with the same unhurried movement Clara had watched him use to lift a soup spoon.

Her stomach turned.

"Damian."

Everybody looked at the door.

His face changed first with surprise, then with a hunger so naked she almost forgot the knife.

Almost.

"Why are you here?"

"Why didn't you come for me?"

He looked away.

"Owen, take her home."

She went to him instead.

Up close, he smelled of tobacco. His jaw was freshly shaved, but there were shadows under his eyes.

She put her hand into his free one.

He didn't close his fingers around it. He didn't pull away either.

"It's Christmas," she said quietly. "What are you doing?"

"Something that should have been done months ago."

She glanced at the man on the floor.

Vince answered the question Damian wouldn't.

"The supplier. The materials he sold Ethan. We've been looking for him since August."

The man bent forward.

"I was cheated too. I didn't make the stuff. I just—"

"You altered the certificates," Damian said.

His voice was low enough to frighten her more than shouting would have.

"Two people are dead."

Clara's fingers tightened around his.

"And another dead man fixes that?"

"He isn't dying."

"You have a knife in your hand."

Damian looked at her then, anger gathering behind his eyes.

"You weren't the one who had to watch you read that letter."

For a second she couldn't speak.

Owen moved nearer the door. Nobody else moved at all.

Clara took a breath.

"If we're going to follow it backward, Ethan wanted to repay money I gave him. Should you punish me too?"

"Don't."

"I saved you that first night. If I hadn't, none of this marriage would have happened. Should we start there?"

"You know damn well why I'm doing this."

"Yes," she said, and her voice broke despite her effort to keep it steady. "I do. Put it down."

He stared at her.

She could feel the muscles in his hand, rigid beneath her fingers. He had been angry for months. She had been angry for months. Neither of them knew how to step out of it without feeling that the other had won.

"Please," she said.

The knife struck the table.

Owen opened the door at once.

"Get him out."

Vince objected. Owen caught his sleeve and spoke too softly for Clara to hear.

A moment later the supplier was being helped into the corridor, still promising repayment.

"A full refund," Owen told him. "The replacement costs too. You'll speak to the accountants after you've seen a doctor."

The door shut.

Clara listened until the footsteps faded. Only then did she realize how tightly she had been holding her shoulders. She lowered them slowly, one painful breath at a time.

Damian stood with his back to Clara.

She looked at the cigarette burning between his fingers and took it from him.

He turned sharply as she lifted it toward her mouth.

"What the hell are you doing?"

He snatched it away and crushed it into a glass.

"I wanted to find out what was so irresistible."

"You don't smoke."

"You said you didn't either."

His mouth tightened.

"Fine. I'll stop."

She nodded.

The victory felt small and sad. She hadn't come all this way to win an argument about a cigarette.

"Damian."

He looked toward the window.

She moved behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist.

His whole body went still.

For a few seconds there was only the distant bass from downstairs and the sound of his breathing.

"I drove three hours," she said against his back.

"Nobody asked you to."

"I know."

He covered her hands then, reluctantly, as if they were something he had found in the snow and didn't quite trust himself to keep.

She went around to face him.

His expression remained stern. It would have been more convincing if his eyes hadn't followed every movement of her mouth.

"Are you going to stay angry all night?"

"Maybe."

"That sounds tiring."

He didn't smile.

She searched her coat pocket and found the little tin she carried to keep herself awake through late meetings. She shook a mint into her palm.

"I haven't had dinner," she said. "This may be the whole Christmas menu unless you come home."

"You drove without eating?"

There he was.

She unwrapped the mint, put it on her tongue, and tipped her face up to his.

"Want something sweet?"

He looked at her mouth, then at her eyes.

"Clara."

She caught the open collar of his shirt.

"Come here, husband."

His hand closed around her waist.

The kiss tasted of mint and all the words they had been too stubborn to say.

When she finally drew back, he rested his forehead against hers, his fingers spread across her back as if checking she was really there.

"Still angry?" she whispered.

"Ask me later."

"After dinner?"

He breathed out something that was almost a laugh.

"After I feed you."