Chapter 5
He didn't stay frozen long.
I heard his shoes on the marble before I felt him behind me. That hard, clipped sound against the stone, cutting under the chatter and the clink of glasses. I had made it to the alcove near the far banquet table, where the light from the chandeliers didn't fall as directly, and the floral centerpieces threw long shadows across the white linen. I thought the distance would give me air. It didn't.
His hand didn't touch me, but his voice did, low and sharp at my ear.
"You think you can pull this here?" he hissed. "On my fortieth? You stole the house papers to embarrass me."
I kept my clutch tight in my left hand. The glitter caught the dimmer light and threw it back. My bracelet had slipped down my wrist and I could feel it cold against my skin.
"I didn't steal anything," I said.
He stepped closer, into the edge of the alcove. His tuxedo was perfect, the white pocket square still crisp, his watch glinting on his left wrist. Up close I could see the tight line of his mouth, the way his breathing had gone shallow. He wanted this to stay quiet, a private threat inside a public party.
"Those papers were in my office," he said. "In my house."
"They were in the hall closet," I said. "In a file with my mother's name on it. You asked me to leave, Andre. I only took what was mine."
My voice was quieter than his. I could hear my own breath in it. I hadn't realized how audible it was until the words were out, a soft catch between each sentence. The band had started playing again on the other side of the hall, something low and brassy that made his jaw work harder to keep his voice down.
"That house is community property," he said. "You don't get to walk out with a deed and play victim under a chandelier."
"It was bought before we married," I said. "With my mom's inheritance. The papers prove it. The wire transfer, the closing statement. Everything."
That stopped him for half a second. His eyes flicked down to the clutch, then back to my face. I saw the calculation happen, quick and practiced, the same look he got when someone at a charity gala asked about the foundation numbers.
"Give it here," he said. "You want to talk ownership, we talk with lawyers. Not with you parading around in that dress."
He reached for the clutch. Not a lunge, a grab, his right hand opening and closing toward the beaded strap where my fingers were locked. I had expected it and still my stomach dropped.
I stepped back.
The banquet table was behind me. My hips hit its edge and the linen bunched. A water glass rattled against a plate. I put the table between us, my left hand with the clutch pulling it against my ribs, my right hand flat on the linen for balance. The wood was solid under the cloth, and the distance it gave me was only two feet, but it was enough.
"Don't," I said. My breath was louder now, and I didn't try to hide it.
He froze with his hand still extended over the table, his ring catching the light. He realized how it looked. A man in a black tuxedo reaching across a banquet table for his wife's purse while a hundred people drank champagne behind him. He pulled his hand back, but he didn't step back.
"You think that makes you safe?" he whispered. "That table?"
"It makes it visible," I said.
We stood like that, the table a barrier, the chandelier light cutting a sharp line across the marble between the bright hall and this dimmer alcove. I could feel the sheer draping on my shoulder shift with my breathing, and the slit of my gown brush my leg. Every small movement felt loud.
From the corner of my eye I saw movement near the cake on the left edge of the room. The staff man in the bow tie, the one who had been holding the green bottle with the gold foil, had moved closer. He wasn't looking directly at us, he was straightening glasses on a tray, but his head was angled just enough. He had noticed. The older woman in the gold sequined gown was farther back now, near the chandeliers, watching from a distance but not intervening.
Andre saw him too. His expression tightened. He smoothed his tie with his left hand, the watch sliding over his wrist bone, and forced his mouth into something that might have read as a smile from far away.
"We're not done," he said, low enough that only I could hear.
May you like
"We are for tonight," I said.
I didn't move from behind the table. He didn't reach again. The grab had failed and the presence of the staff man, tray in hand and eyes carefully elsewhere, made a second attempt impossible without making a scene he couldn't control. The alcove held us in that stalemate, warm light on his side, shadow on mine, my breath steadying against the linen under my palm.
