And then, there was Emma. Or more accurately, there she wasn’t. Every time I entered a room, I expected to see her. With her feet curled beneath her in the living room. Slouching over a book at the kitchen island. Places where she used to be but couldn’t be anymore. It was like a haunting without the ghost.
My heels clacked on the checkered marble floor in the foyer, and I tossed my purse and keys on the huge round table in the center. If the housekeeper had thought Neil was coming, there would have been a great big flower arrangement on it, but since it was just me, a tall, brightly colored glass sculpture stood there. I’d never seen it before. I dug out my phone and snapped a picture. I texted Neil, what is this ugly thing and when did you buy it? Then, I kicked off my shoes—Neil the neat freak wasn’t there to scold me—and headed for the kitchen.
And because I’m a big, stupid baby, I turned every light in the house on as I went through the living room with its serene white furniture and the dining room with its table so long it could have hosted the Last Supper. I found dinner waiting in the refrigerator, along with neatly handwritten instructions about how to reheat it. By the time I slipped it into the oven, Neil had texted back.
I haven’t seen it ages. Elizabeth bought it.
Great. More Elizabeth all over the place.
The weird thing was, I hadn’t really had a problem with Neil’s ex-wife until I’d met her. She’d been perfectly polite, and her life had moved on without Neil, so there was no reason for me to be threatened. Something about seeing the beautiful, poised socialite Neil had been madly in love with before me had shaken me up, and I’d only realized it after I’d tried to write it as a humorous anecdote in my second book. She’d told me that she’d read I’m Just The Girlfriend, and in hindsight, that had seemed gross and intrusive. While I was totally cool with thousands of strangers reading about the intimate details of Neil’s and my everyday life, she and Valerie were probably the only two people I didn’t want to read it. That horrible time when he was in and out of the hospital, near death for a few weeks, had been just Neil and me, alone. It was ours. Like the apartment, I didn’t like sharing it with Elizabeth, even in a passive way.
Part of the issue was that Elizabeth had been so damned good at living the life I now inhabited. She’d had no problems navigating the upper echelon of New York society—she’d been born into it. That was the kind of person billionaires married. Not women from poor Michigan backgrounds. Another, more significant, part was the irrational feeling that Neil had another family, like my father. Which was ridiculous, since at the time of Neil’s marriage to Elizabeth, I hadn’t even known his real name.
Neil’s ringtone sounded, and I answered the phone.
“If you don’t like it, we can get rid of it,” he said in an easy extension of our text conversation. “Christie’s would sell it.”
I shrugged, even though he couldn’t see me. “Nah. It’s no big. My eyes won’t bleed from looking at it. What are you doing?”
“Reading.”
“Reading.” I smiled to myself. “Reading those papers from North Star?”
“No,” he said, immediately defensive. Then, “Yes, fine. I am.”
“For someone who’s retired, you do an awful lot of work,” I pointed out.
“Early retirement,” he replied, leaning heavily on the first word, “doesn’t mean a person loses all interest in working. I simply work less.”
“Okay, that part is true,” I conceded. Neil used to work excessive hours, trying to control every aspect of his company. Though North Star Media wasn’t technically his responsibility, he did own a sizable share in it. Since his late father had founded the company, it seemed only natural that Neil would maintain an interest in it.
“Actually—”
“No,” I said automatically. I knew what he was about to say. The amount of time he’d been “interested” in the company had increased incrementally over the last few months.
He jumped immediately to the defensive, proving my suspicion correct. “It would only be part-time. And a few weeks out of the year, I would fly over to the main offices and sit in on some board meetings—”
“The point of you retiring early was so I could be the one obsessed with work,” I reminded him. “Plus, what’s that going to do to Olivia, you being gone a few weeks out of the year?” He’d already been gone long enough. While I knew many, many people found themselves separated from their children for long stretches of time, I felt like Neil had used up all of his absentee grandfather days while he’d been in the hospital.