The Broken Portfolio

Clara's consultation lasted two hours.

By the time she left, she had a list of programs, a revised schedule, and a clear understanding of how much work she still needed to do.

It steadied her.

Nobody at the little office asked whether she was being difficult or why she couldn't simply be pleased. They asked what she wanted to study, which projects belonged in the portfolio, and how she could explain the gap between finishing college and returning to formal education.

Those were questions with answers.

She went to her office for the bound copies of her work, bought two books, and returned to the hotel.

The bedroom hadn't been slept in.

She called Damian.

No answer.

Owen was at a meeting elsewhere. Vince answered on the second ring.

"He's with me."

"Where?"

"He told me not to say."

She laughed once, without amusement.

"Of course he did."

"Clara—"

"Never mind."

She ordered dinner for one and carried it to the small table by the window.

Afterward she worked.

Her city projects were reaching a stage where she could leave without abandoning anybody halfway through a promise. Graduate study had once been something other people did because their families could afford time without income.

Now she could choose it.

She turned a page in her portfolio and saw the first drawing she had made for Bennett Row. The paper original was somewhere at home. This copy showed every careful line, every small attempt to imagine a place that had belonged to her before anybody could take it away.

She made a note in the margin of the application plan.

Explain why restoration matters personally.

Then she crossed out personally.

Too much could fit inside that word.

***

Damian had spent the afternoon in the back of Vince's SUV.

He had watched her go to an admissions adviser, her office, a bookstore.

There was no other man. No secret meeting. Nothing he could identify as the thing that was taking her away from him.

Somehow that made it worse.

He returned to the hotel bar for a business meeting and declined a proposal to expand the company faster than he could sensibly manage.

The investors kept explaining how much more he could have.

He thought of a lakeside house with no furniture and a wife who couldn't wait to leave it.

"We have enough," he said.

Owen escorted the disappointed men out.

Damian remained at the bar.

By the time he went upstairs, it was after midnight.

Clara heard the door open and the soft thump of his jacket landing on the sofa.

"Clara."

She finished writing a sentence.

"What?"

"Come here."

"I'm working."

He sat with his eyes closed, fighting the slow turn of the room.

He hadn't meant to drink so much. A few drinks had made the afternoon easier to endure. More hadn't improved it.

He got up and went to find her.

The little table was covered with books, folders, and photographs of buildings he remembered driving her to inspect.

He picked up a portfolio.

For a moment he smiled.

Then he saw the application checklist beneath it.

References. Academic statement. Financial documentation. Passport.

"You're really going."

She looked up.

"I'm applying."

"And when were you going to tell me?"

"When I knew where."

He set the portfolio down too hard.

"Everybody knows except me."

"Everybody doesn't know. I haven't even decided."

She smelled the alcohol as he leaned closer.

"Damian, you're drunk. We'll talk tomorrow."

He caught her arm.

"You keep saying tomorrow."

She stood to get past him. He pulled her toward him instead and kissed her before she could turn her head.

She pushed at his chest.

"Stop."

He tightened his grip, frightened by the movement away from him, too muddled to understand that fear wasn't an answer to hers.

The table struck her back as she stumbled against it.

Books slid. A glass tipped over.

"You're hurting me."

The lamp hit the floor.

The crash stopped him.

He released her immediately, staring as if the room had changed around him.

Clara stood with one hand on the table, breathing hard.

He reached toward her.

She slapped him.

The sound was small after the breaking glass.

"Don't touch me."

He lowered his hand.

She moved away from him, pulling her cardigan together, and crouched beside the scattered books.

One portfolio lay open with its binding split. Several pages had come free. Water spread beneath another, darkening the photographs of a project she had spent eighteen months helping bring to life.

She picked it up with both hands.

"Clara."

She didn't look at him.

He knelt a few feet away, careful now, horribly late with the care.

"I hurt you."

Her fingers tightened around the broken cover.

"Yes."

He swallowed.

"I didn't mean—"

She looked at him then, and he stopped.

Intent was useless in the room they were standing in.

He put a clean towel beside her for the wet pages. She took it without touching his hand.

They worked in silence for a minute, lifting paper out of water.

Then she found the gold lettering on the spine had torn away with the cloth.

Her face crumpled.

"We'll have it remade," he said. "Exactly the same. Better paper. Whatever you want."

She began to cry harder.

"You don't understand."

He sat back on his heels.

There it was again. The place he could never seem to reach.

To her it wasn't a book he could replace. It was years of hungry mornings, borrowed pencils, skipped dinners, and the slow, humiliating work of making people see more than the clothes she could afford.

She had kept going when nobody noticed. Now someone did notice, someone was supposed to be on her side, and she couldn't bear how much more it hurt.

"I know there's a file," she said. "I know it isn't gone. You don't have to tell me that."

"Then tell me what you need."

She stared at him through tears.

"I needed you not to do it."

He bowed his head.

The room became very quiet.

After a while he stood and moved to the window.

"I wanted you to have the things you wanted," he said. "The house. Your work. That street. I thought if I could make it easier—"

He stopped, ashamed of how close it sounded to presenting a bill.

She looked at the mark on her arm. It was already fading, but she could still feel the pressure of his hand.

"I said stop."

He swallowed.

"I heard you too late."

"You heard me. You didn't listen."

He made himself look at her instead of the floor.

"You're right."

She hadn't expected the answer. It didn't undo anything, and she hated that some part of her still wanted to be comforted by him.

"I don't want you near me tonight."

"All right."

He moved back before she had to ask again. The space he left seemed enormous in the little room.

She took a breath and tried to make her fingers stop shaking. He watched her try, knowing that offering his hands now would only make it worse.

She set the damaged book on the towel.

"Buying things isn't the same as understanding."

"I know."

His voice was rough.

"I wanted to understand. Your days. Your friends. What you think about when you're not with me. But you don't tell me any of it anymore."

"That doesn't make tonight all right."

"I didn't say it did."

He looked at the broken lamp, then at the red mark on her arm.

For the first time that evening, he seemed entirely sober.

"I'll sleep somewhere else."

She didn't ask him to stay.

At the door he looked back once.

Clara was on the floor with the towel spread across her knees, holding her work together one page at a time.

He went out quietly.