I thought about Harrison’s presence, the way it had felt to be seen, really seen, by someone who remembered who I used to be.
“I was surprised,” I repeated. “That’s all.”
Wesley stared at me for a long moment, his eyes searching my face for something I couldn’t identify. Then abruptly he turned and walked to the bar cart in the living room.
“Forty years,” he said, pouring himself three fingers of scotch. “Forty years I’ve given you everything. A beautiful home, financial security, social standing. I’ve protected you, provided for you. Never asked for anything more than loyalty.”
Loyalty.
The word sat strangely in the air between us.
“And I’ve been loyal,” I said quietly.
“Have you?” He turned back to face me, glass in hand. “Because tonight, standing there in front of half the medical community, it sure didn’t look like loyalty. It looked like a woman who was ready to throw away everything we’ve built for the fantasy of what might have been.”
“That’s not—”
“He offered you a job, Clarissa. A job you’re not qualified for, a job you haven’t worked toward, a job you couldn’t possibly handle after spending 40 years as a housewife.”
Each word was precisely chosen to cut.
“Did you really think no one would notice how inappropriate that was? How it made me look? How it made him look?”
Not how it made me feel. To be dismissed, belittled, reduced to my marital status in front of a room full of professionals.
How it made him look.
“Maybe I could handle it,” I said.
The words surprised me as much as they seemed to surprise Wesley.
He actually laughed. “Handle it? Clarissa, you haven’t worked outside this house in decades. You’ve never managed a budget larger than our household expenses. You’ve never supervised staff or handled administrative responsibilities. What makes you think you could walk into a major medical center and run a department?”
Each question felt like a small slap designed to remind me of my limitations, my narrow world, my lack of qualifications for anything beyond the life he had chosen for me.
But something inside me, something that had been sleeping for 40 years, stirred to life.
“I completed two years of medical school,” I said quietly. “I had a 4.0 grade average. I was offered research positions that I turned down to marry you.”
Wesley’s expression hardened. “Medical school was 40 years ago. The field has completely changed. You’d be lost in a week.”
“Would I?”
“Yes. And more importantly, you’d embarrass yourself. And me.”
He took a long sip of his scotch, watching me over the rim of the glass.
“Is that really what you want? To make a fool of yourself chasing some middle-aged fantasy because an old flame showed up with more money than sense?”
The card in my palm seemed to pulse with possibility. But Wesley’s words were designed to make that possibility feel shameful, unrealistic, foolish.
“I wasn’t chasing anything. I said I was just listening.”
“Well, stop listening and throw away whatever he gave you.”
We stared at each other across our beautiful, cold living room. Outside, I could hear the wind rustling through the magnolia trees that gave our street its name. Inside, the grandfather clock marked the seconds with mechanical precision.
“I think I’ll go to bed,” I said finally.
Wesley nodded, already turning back to his scotch. “Good. And Clarissa, tomorrow we’re going to forget this entire evening happened. We’re going to go back to our normal life and pretend that man never walked into that ballroom.”
I climbed the stairs slowly, my hand trailing along the mahogany banister Wesley was so proud of. In our bedroom, I sat on the edge of the bed and finally opened my palm to look at Harrison’s card again.
The door is always open.
But as I sat there in the darkness of my beautiful empty bedroom, I wondered if some doors once closed could ever really be opened again.
I didn’t sleep that night. I lay in bed beside Wesley, listening to his measured breathing, turning Harrison’s business card over and over in my fingers until the edges were soft from handling. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw his face at the gala, older, distinguished, but with the same passionate intensity I remembered from our medical school days.
