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“I know. Boo-hoo,” her mother sang.
“It’s just that he’s not very nice to me all the time,” Rose hurried to say.
“You’re saying the wealthy man you married isn’t always so nice?” Her mother was condescending. “How surprising!”
Rose curled into a ball on the sofa and gazed out at the black night. Where was Oren right now? Probably with some French woman who took his breath away. Probably drinking wine and eating decadent food. They’d only been here five weeks or so, and already her marriage was off the rails. It had to be Rose’s fault.
Oren was probably thinking he shouldn’t have married her.
He was probably thinking,I’m not over Natalie. I’ll never be over Natalie.
“I need help, Mom,” Rose breathed. She sounded pathetic. No wonder her mother hated her so much.
“Honey, you need to learn to help yourself,” her mother said.
Suddenly, there was a horrible twist in Rose’s abdomen. She groaned and stretched out. Pain electrified her head.The baby. What’s wrong with the baby?
Rose hung up without saying goodbye and limped across the living room. Her stomach spasmed. Pain was the only thing she understood. A few minutes later, blood dripped from between her legs, and she understood.I have to get to the hospital immediately.
Rose hobbled downstairs to hail a taxi. She felt stupid, especially when she cried and winced and smacked her thigh with pain in the back seat. The driver kept glancing back with worry. But every time he asked her a question, she couldn’t answer. The stress made her French fly out of her head.
Perhaps it shouldn’t have been a surprise that Rose lost the baby.
Perhaps it shouldn’t have shocked her so greatly.
But one minute, she’d had all the ingredients for a happy life—a handsome husband, a baby on the way, and apartments in Manhattan and Paris and Los Angeles and Dubai. A fat bank account. A fresh wardrobe. And the next, she was twisted up in bloody sheets at a hospital in Paris, asking them to call her husband. “I don’t know where he is,” she yelped. “I don’t know!”
Rose couldn’t tell Oren about the loss of their baby until the following afternoon. She was released and took a cab back to their apartment, where she found Oren nursing a hangover and already sipping a glass of whiskey. She’d calculated the cost of each pour of that particular whiskey before.Seven hundred dollars each.
Oren was quiet for a long time after she told him what happened. He looked at her as though it was all her fault. Maybe it was. Perhaps this was Rose’s body’s way of sayingGet out of this situation. Get yourself back to America.
But Oren wrapped his arms around her and held her as she wept. He cried, too.
They made promises that night. They told each other they would continue to try. A baby was in their future; they were sure of it; they’d already set so many plans. Oren was going to stay home more often; he was going totake care of his wife. And Rose was going to be better; she was going to be great. She was going to know everything there was to know, but she was never going to “upstage” Oren, especially not in front of his friends.
Being married was like a balancing act. In her post-miscarriage haze, Rose was so sure she could manage it. She could carry her and Oren and their love for the rest of her life. It would probably get much easier from here on out. Probably.
Chapter Nineteen
Present Day
Howard Reynold’s office was located in Midtown, Manhattan, in an art deco building that reminded Rose of the one she’d been married in just a few blocks away.Memories always linger just beneath the surface. They’re always apt to bite you.Rose and Sean parked in an underground lot a block away and approached the building with their hands in their pockets and their chins raised to take in the mighty view. Around them, the city was alive in ways she’d forgotten it could be. People of every race and creed and fashion and knowledge whizzed past, some talking exuberantly into their phones, others crying, others hurrying to the bus or the subway. Some of them ate sandwiches like their lives depended on them. Some of them paused to take photographs.
It was incredible to Rose that she’d spent any portion of her life in Manhattan. It seemed so foreign to her.
Sean had made an appointment with Howard forthree o’clock. The secretary asked them to wait in the lobby and explained Howard was running late. She said it as though Howard was the most important man on the entire island. His time was precious, and Rose and Sean were stones in his shoes.
“Does he know why we’re coming?” Rose asked Sean now, wringing her hands and watching for any movement from the closed door.
“He knows you’re the one who bought the house from him,” Sean said. “I think that intrigued him enough to take the meeting.”
Rose’s heart swelled. Every instinct she had told her to jump up and run to the elevator.Stop digging into Oren’s business. You know what he’ll do to you. It won’t be pretty.
Suddenly, the secretary bolted to her feet, fixed her jacket, and announced, “Mr. Reynolds will see you now.” She even opened the door to let them in.
Howard’s office was decorated with Japanese minimalism in mind. Rose imagined that Howard had spent time in Japan and decided to bring back their aesthetic principles with the hope that some of their other sensibilities would rub off on him. That was the way of the wealthy. They wanted to simplify everything. They wanted to throw money at every problem.
Howard stood to shake their hands. He wore a cologne Rose recognized from her years with Oren, something that evoked money and the idea of multiple vacation homes. He was still handsome, but there was something overly slick about it.
