A Choice of My Own

The next morning, Vincent came to the apartment with breakfast and a small paper bag.

Lily inspected the bag before greeting him.

"Is that for me?"

"It depends. Do you know anyone who likes rabbit-shaped pancakes?"

She opened the bag. Inside was a metal mold with long ears.

"Mrs. Russo made the first one look like a potato," he warned.

Lily looked delighted.

I took the coffee he held out to me. Our fingers touched, and the memory of his mouth made it difficult to say good morning normally.

He watched me over the rim of his cup.

"Did you sleep?"

"Eventually."

"I didn't."

Lily glanced between us.

"Were you having bad dreams?"

I inhaled coffee.

Vincent handed me a napkin without looking away.

"I was thinking."

"You should read Button's book. Mommy says thinking has to stop at bedtime."

"I'll ask to borrow it."

For two days, everything felt possible.

Then a society website published a photograph of me leaving the house with Lily.

The headline called me an ambitious housekeeper. The article suggested that I had coached my daughter to disrupt a respectable engagement and had been rewarded with residence in the Moretti home.

There was no picture of Arthur outside my apartment. No mention of the forged deposit slip. Only my daughter, caught midstep, clutching her rabbit.

Someone from my old building sent me the link with six question marks.

I was still staring at it when Vincent came upstairs.

"The lawyers are handling the picture," he said.

"They published her face."

"I know."

His voice had the dangerous quiet I remembered from the conference room.

"The school has been warned about unauthorized visitors. Marco has changed the collection arrangements. And I've asked Mrs. Russo to take you off the household schedule for now."

I looked up.

"You've done what?"

"You shouldn't have to work while this is happening."

"Did you ask whether I wanted to stop?"

He paused.

"You would remain on full pay."

"That wasn't my question."

His expression hardened, reflexively, as though I were a difficult clause in a contract.

"Elena, someone is following you. This is hardly the time to insist on making beds."

The words stung more because he did not seem to hear them.

I put the phone down.

"That job paid for our apartment when no one else was going to. It isn't embarrassing to me."

"I didn't say it was."

"You just spoke as though keeping it was foolish."

He drew a breath.

"I am trying to protect you."

"Then talk to me. Don't rearrange my life and tell me afterward."

Lily's bedroom door was open behind us. I lowered my voice before she could hear us arguing.

"I know your life is easier if you decide something and people do it. Mine hasn't been."

Vincent looked toward the bedroom, then back at me.

"That's unfair."

"So is finding out that the man I kissed can cancel my work before breakfast."

The silence after that was terrible.

His mouth tightened. I could see the effort it cost him not to answer immediately.

"You're right," he said finally. "I should have spoken to you first."

I folded my arms because I wanted to reach for him, and that made me angrier.

"And I need to know what this is."

He looked at me steadily.

"You know what it is."

"I know what it feels like when you kiss me. I don't know whether you would have wanted me before Sophia hurt you."

Something changed in his face.

"You think I'm replacing her with you."

"I think you were promised a family and lost it. Now we're here. Lily adores you. It would be easy to want the shape of us."

He turned toward the window.

For a moment, I thought he would leave.

Instead he placed his coffee on the counter and faced me again.

"I noticed you in February."

I blinked.

"What?"

"Mrs. Russo had the flu. I came home after midnight and found you asleep at the kitchen table beside a pile of folded towels. You woke up and told me the soup in the refrigerator was hers, and that I wasn't to eat it."

I remembered. I had thought I was going to be fired then too.

"You looked furious with me for existing near the soup," he said. "I wanted to ask you to sit down again. Instead I went upstairs."

My arms loosened.

"Why didn't you?"

"Because you worked for me. Because I wasn't particularly good at wanting things I couldn't arrange. Because by the time I stopped making excuses, Sophia had told me she was pregnant."

He took one step closer.

"I want you when Lily is at school. I want you when you're arguing with me. I wanted you before I ever saw that drawing."

My throat tightened.

"Then you have to let me make choices you don't like."

"I am discovering that."

A small, unwilling smile pulled at my mouth.

He saw it and came closer.

"Tell me what you want today."

I thought before answering.

"I want to keep my work schedule unless I ask for time off. I want the school to speak to me about changes. And I want dinner tomorrow without spending it discussing whoever wrote that article."

"All right."

"You agreed very quickly."

"I'm attempting to learn. Don't discourage me."

I stepped into him. His arms went around me, and I rested my forehead against his chest.

"I'm still angry."

"I noticed."

"You can kiss me anyway."

He tipped my chin up.

"I was hoping you would say that."

That evening, he brought Lily's drawing upstairs and asked where we wanted it hung.

"I thought it was yours," I said.

"I'd like another one for my office. This one belongs here."

Lily immediately drew him with enormous hands.

"Why are they so big?" he asked.

She looked at him as though the answer were obvious.

"So you can hold both of us."

I watched Vincent look at the drawing.

He did not make a promise to her. He did not turn it into a speech.

He put down the crayon, reached for my hand beneath the table, and held it until dinner.