Rose wedged herself up against the kitchen island and sipped her wine slowly as Landon worked the room, clearly dejected she’d come all this way only to be a sullen party guest. His colleagues had found her, one by one, and introduced themselves, then flittedoff to talk shop. A woman Rose hadn’t met yet caught her eye from the other side of the island, hand deep in a bowl of chips.
“You’re Landon’s wife, right?” she asked. “Rose?”
“Mmm-hmm,” Rose said through a large gulp of the red that was going down smoother by the minute. She hadn’t had much to drink since the birth. Tonight, it felt like an anesthetic.
“How’s parenthood treating you?”
She hated that question. “Oh, you know,” she said. “It’s good. I mean, I’m not really sleeping, but she’s wonderful. The baby’s wonderful.” Rose always had to remind herself to tone it down when talking to anyone about Cordelia. Because she was everything: her moon, her stars, her reason for waking.
“Well, you look amazing,” she said. “I would never know you just had a baby.”
It was a toxic compliment. It was also objectively untrue. For the first time since they’d started speaking, she gave the woman her full attention. “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name?”
“I’m Olivia.” Olivia smiled, revealing two rows of perfectly square white teeth. Likely too perfect to be anything other than veneers. Her auburn hair was pulled back into a sleek ponytail, and she wore a silky mauve blouse tucked into pants that looked like they cost more than Rose’s rent in Brooklyn. She was the kind of woman who annoyed Rose on a good day and infuriated her six months postpartum: one who makes enormous effort look effortless.
“Well, it was nice to meet you, Olivia,” she said, hoping that she wouldn’t need to be any more explicit than that. Olivia grabbed a few more chips, the dainty gold jewelry on her wrist and fingers glittering.
“Nice to meet you, too,” she said. “I’ve just heard so much about you.”
Rose couldn’t say the same any more than she could transform the pit in her stomach into a feather. She scanned the room until she found Landon, his towering body not so out of place among the glass windows and high ceilings. He was angled toward his boss, laughing loudly at something someone had said, his posture perfect. It was a version of him she hadn’t seen in recent memory: at home in his body. Rose blinked and the conversation around her swirled. Something about a lake house, something about Napa, something about the fees to check bags on domestic flights. Then, Olivia, whose hands had just been in the bowl of chips in front of her, who had just made polite if annoying small talk with her, floated toward Landon to join their conversation, all bright and shining. The expression on her face did not need translation. Rose was sure if someone had surreptitiously photographed the first weeks of her and Landon’s budding romance, her eyes would have held the same fire as Olivia’s—those eyes that were locked on her husband.
Landon turned his head quickly, like he’d already known she was behind him. Rose had always loved that about Landon—the way he could sense her presence anywhere. She’d thought that soul connection had been reserved just for her.
Rose knew pain like an old friend, but this was different. This was a snake bite leaking toxins directly to her bloodstream.
Something had happened with her.
The venom spread, threading through every three a.m. wake-up, rocking her daughter back to sleep while Landon slept. Would she have sensed it if she’d allowed him in? Had it been just one time, the two of them working late at the office? Had it been more?
Landon had had over a decade to learn to translate the lines of her face, so when he finally caught her staring, he knew. Hissmile faltered. His shoulders scrunched. She hoped the snake had bitten him, too, and that the venom would feel as raw as it did in her body, now stretched to its limit.
“Rose.” Landon sat behind the steering wheel, eyes wild. “Rose, talk to me. Please.”
She’d been silent on the ride home, but once he’d pulled his car into the driveway, the sturdy tires popping and shifting over gravel, she knew she would need to find the words to begin. Even if those words were as imperfect as she and Landon were.
“What happened?” Rose asked. Simple, direct. She locked eyes with him and did not falter. Hiding behind her hands would not change the facts.
“Nothing,” he said. “Nothing happened, Rose. I wouldn’t do that to you. You have to believe I wouldn’t ever do that to you.”
There was a time she would have. “So, what,” Rose said, “you two are just friends, then?” Landon had a lot of friends. None of them looked at him the way Olivia did—like they knew something about him no one else in the world did.
“We’re friends,” he said, breathless. “We’ve been spending a lot of time together. I really didn’t want to upset you, but these layoffs are going to be massive, and we have got to get this project right. It’s been long hours, travel—I mean, you know that. I haven’t been home. I’ve missed so much. I should be apologizing to you forthat, not some story you’ve invented in your head.”
Landon was barely concealing his panic. There was something he wasn’t saying. “Let me see your phone.” He’d made her a parody: the nagging wife who couldn’t take her husband at his word.
“You want to see my phone?” he asked, perhaps as stunned by this turn of events as Rose was.
“I want to see the sorts of things two friends say to one another.”
“Rose—”
“If you don’t give me your phone right now, I’m going to assume the worst.”
He pried it from the pockets of pants Rose had told him were a little too tight for even his slender frame and passed it across the console to her. Rose keyed in the passcode—the same as hers—and tapped the thread with Olivia’s name and photograph.
SEPTEMBER 6th
OLIVIA: I’m excited to see you.