Chapter 7 - Green Gown on the Closet Hook
I didn't turn on the overhead light when I got to my apartment. I left the hallway dark and walked straight to the bedroom with my heels in my hand, the marble cold from the gala still somehow in my feet. The door clicked shut behind me and the quiet hit me harder than the music had.
I set my clutch on the dresser and took my earrings off first. My hands were shaking just enough to make it difficult. I cupped each crystal drop in my palm for a second before I put them in the little ceramic dish. My ears ached where they'd hung all night. I didn't take the bracelet off. The metal was warm from my skin and I could feel each link when I pressed my thumb against it. I needed something to hold onto that wasn't spinning.
The closet light was the only bright light I allowed. I stepped out of the green gown carefully, unzipping the side with my arm twisted behind me. The pleats had held their shape through all of it, through standing and walking and trying not to fall apart in front of two hundred people. I slid it onto the padded hanger and hung it on the hook inside the door instead of pushing it deep into the closet. I stood there looking at it.
The V-neckline hung empty. The straps lay flat. Without me in it, it looked smaller, just fabric and thread again. I smoothed one pleat between my fingers. I could still smell the ballroom on it, perfume and white lilies and warm air under the chandeliers. I didn't want to wash that out yet. I wasn't ready to decide what that dress meant.
I changed into a gray T-shirt and sweatpants and sat on the edge of the bed. The apartment was too quiet after the gala. No clinking glasses, no low talk, no orchestra. Just the refrigerator humming in the kitchen and a car passing on the street below. I kept seeing Daniel's face when he paused at the doorway.
I replayed it the way I'd replayed it in the car. He hadn't looked surprised. That was what I kept coming back to. When he turned back toward me with his arm still around her, his mouth was set in a flat line and his eyes moved over me once, quick, like he was checking how bad it looked. Not like a man caught off guard. Like a man calculating. Then he looked away first. She was the one who held the look a second longer. I pressed my thumb hard into my bracelet until the edge left a mark. I didn't want to guess anymore. I wanted times.
I pulled the small notebook I kept in my nightstand drawer, the one I used for grocery lists and parking lot numbers and the plumber's phone number. I flipped to a clean page and wrote the date at the top. My handwriting was uneven.
I wrote what I knew without adding words to it. 8:04 p.m. — arrived, valet ticket 112. 8:15 p.m. — photos by floral wall. 9:40 p.m. — Daniel left with woman in red. I stared at that last line. I added underneath it what the stranger had told me outside, only the facts. Staff access, north service door. I didn't write his name because he hadn't given it. I underlined 9:40 twice.
Seeing it on paper steadied me. It wasn't a feeling. It was a line. A door. An exit that happened while I was still standing in the middle of the floor in that green dress.
I thought about calling in sick to the foundation office in the morning. I thought about staying in bed and letting the phone ring and pretending the night hadn't happened. Then I looked at the gown on the hook and at the times in my notebook. If I stayed home, I'd just sit here and turn that look-back over and over until it became whatever I feared most. I needed something I could check.
May you like
I set my phone alarm for six thirty and laid out clothes for the morning, plain black pants and a white blouse. I put the notebook in my work bag and zipped it shut. I wasn't going to accuse him. I wasn't ready for that, and I didn't have enough yet. I was going to go to the foundation tower and start with the public record — the sign-in sheet, the program, who was listed as staff. Quiet work. Factual work.
I turned off the closet light last. The green gown went dark on its hook, but I knew it was there. I kept the bracelet on when I got under the covers.
