I pick a small pho place in Allston. Pho Hà. Three years ago we used to come here on weeknights.
The owner, Jin, does not recognize me. She lights up when she sees Elliott.
"Eli. Three years. Where have you been hiding. Two number sevens — no cilantro for her, right?"
Elliott looks at me. "Do you eat cilantro now."
"No."
He looks back at Jin. "Still no."
The bowls come out. Neither of us picks up the chopsticks.
I go first.
"Dad's case is being reopened. Linh and Camilla aren't getting out of it."
"Mhm."
"And your mother."
He says, "I moved out of the Beacon Hill house this morning. I'm pulling her authority on the holding company. Quietly, but completely."
I look up at him. "You're going to tear up your own family over this."
He looks back. "Not for you. For me."
I don't say anything.
He continues. "If I can't take my own life back I have no business standing in front of you."
The bell over the front door of Pho Hà rings.
I drop my eyes to my bowl. The steam fogs up my face. I tell myself it is the steam.
Halfway through the soup the bell over the door chimes again, and a small high voice from the front:
"Mommy!"
Theo, with a tiny backpack slapping against his butt, is sprinting between the tables. Behind him: Cassidy. Behind Cassidy: Maeve.
I almost choke.
Maeve, hand on heart: "We were just in the neighborhood."
Cassidy: "Coincidence. We tracked you very organically."
Theo climbs up onto the bench next to me and looks at us with serious eyes.
"Mom. Which one is Dad today?"
The entire pho shop pauses. Two BU undergrads at a corner table go absolutely still.
Elliott sets his chopsticks down. He looks at Cassidy.
Cassidy raises both hands. "I'm out. Permanently."
Maeve has her face in her hands trying not to die.
I clamp a hand over Theo's mouth.
"Call him mister."
Theo blinks. "But the man with the eyebrows said if I see you I should call you Mommy. He bought me a backhoe."
I look at Elliott.
He raises his water glass with the steadiest possible hand.
"Practice run."
My ears go hot.
"Elliott."
He looks at me. The corners of his eyes have, for the first time tonight, a small genuine amusement.
"My mistake. I'll file a request next time."
Eleanor finds me again a week later.
She does not bring Camilla. She does not bring her attorney.
She is sitting alone in the café on the ground floor of my building, in a cashmere camel coat, hands wrapped around a flat white.
"Ms. Donovan. Can we talk."
I sit down.
"If this is another offer for me to leave Elliott, please don't."
She looks at me.
"I came to apologize."
I am not prepared for that sentence.
She slides a folder across the table.
"That five hundred thousand. Here is the deposit trail. The funds went to a Linh Donovan account at Citizens Bank. The forger has been turned over to BPD. I am cooperating with the AG's office."
I do not touch the folder.
She continues. "I'll tell you the truth. I looked down on you. I thought you would drag him under."
"So you destroyed me."
Her face goes still.
I say, "Mrs. Pei. You didn't misunderstand me. You never decided I was a person to begin with."
A long silence.
"What kind of compensation do you want."
I almost laugh.
"I want you on the stand. I want you to testify, on the record, to everything you did."
She lifts her eyes.
I look at her.
"I want my father's name cleared. I want Linh and Camilla to pay the full freight. As for what you owe me, that doesn't fit on a check."
Her hand tightens on the cup.
"You're harder to handle than you were three years ago."
"I have you to thank."
She stands. Walks two steps. Stops.
"Eli has not been okay. These three years."
I do not respond.
She lowers her voice. "He looked for you. A lot."
I turn my head and look out the window.
Elliott's car is parked across the street. Black sedan. Plates I would recognize anywhere.
He is not coming up.
He has been doing that, lately. Leaving me the distance.
When Eleanor leaves, my phone buzzes.
— I'm not eavesdropping
— your car is too obvious
He answers fast.
— next time I'll borrow a Camry
I look at the screen. I let myself laugh, a little, at the empty café.
The morning of the hearing I wear a plain navy suit and walk into Suffolk County Superior Court, courtroom 906, on legs that do not feel like mine.
The press is a wall of cameras outside. Camilla has lost weight. When she sees me her eyes go the color of a knife.
Linh will not look at me.
Eleanor takes the stand.
She testifies, on the record, that three years ago she pressured me to leave Boston. That she authorized the NDA. That she had reason to know the signature on it was not mine and chose to use it anyway.
Camilla breaks down on cross. "She told me Wren wasn't good enough for the family! Why am I the one paying for it!"
Eleanor closes her eyes for one second.
"I did wrong, so I am here. So are you."
I sit in the public gallery with my hands wet against my knees.
Elliott sits next to me.
He does not touch me. He sets a small pack of tissues on the bench within reach.
When the verdicts come in, my father's old case is officially vacated. The bankruptcy filing is wiped from his name. Linh is convicted on fraud and forged-document counts. Camilla is convicted on tortious interference and witness-related counts. Eleanor's testimony is entered into the record as cooperating witness.
My father, in his wheelchair in the front row, listens to the verdict and says, in the first complete sentence he has produced in eleven months,
"Wren-bird. Come home."
I cry into his shoulder where the cameras can't see me.
Outside the courthouse it is dusk.
Elliott is leaning against a black sedan at the curb.
"Drive you home?"
I nod.
The car pulls up to my building. He does not unlock the door.
I think he is going to say something hard.
He reaches into the back seat instead and pulls out a manila envelope.
"VP, Marketing. Title, comp band, equity. Signed and dated. The package you should have had two promotions ago."
I stare at it.
"You're talking about work right now."
"I didn't want you to think this was sentiment getting in the way of what you're owed."
I open the envelope. Title. Base. Equity. Scope. Direct reports. All the numbers I have been pretending I didn't see myself getting passed over for.
I look up at him.
"Elliott. This is how you ask people out now."
His throat moves.
"I was afraid that if I were direct, you'd run."
I fold the offer in half, slowly, and tuck it into my bag.
"Okay. You can try."
When Elliott Pei starts dating someone the entire NovaPraxis office breaks down into amateur Bayesian analysts.
He doesn't send flowers. He sends spreadsheets.
He doesn't book restaurants. He books project post-mortems on the calendar.
At 8 AM there is a Sweetgreen kale Caesar on my desk every day. He has memorized that I take the dressing on the side.
Maeve's professional opinion: "This man is dating you the way other people do an acquihire."
I complain about him. My stomach has stopped hurting for the first time in two years.
One night, after a closing-deal dinner with a vendor in the private room at Mooncusser, the vendor tries to top off my wine glass for the third time.
Elliott sets his hand over mine on the stem.
"Her stomach is bad."
The vendor smirks. "Mr. Pei, you're a protective one."
Elliott looks at me.
"For three years I didn't protect her. I'm catching up."
The room goes wolf-whistle.
My ears go incandescent. I yank my hand back.
"Mr. Pei. Workplace decorum."
He lets go, perfectly obedient.
The next moment, he picks up the wine glass himself and drinks the entire thing.
When the dinner ends he is on the wrong side of three glasses.
His town car pulls up to my Cambridge walk-up. I am fully prepared to thank the driver and go upstairs.
Elliott, eyes shut, head against the headrest, says,
"Wren."
"Yes."
"In a lot of dreams these last three years, you got married."
I stop moving.
"In the dreams, Bill was annoying. Timmy was annoying."
I cannot help the small noise that comes out of me. "You're jealous of fictional people."
He opens his eyes.
"You'd rather invent them than turn around and look at me."
Something taps me low in the chest.
He sits up. His voice has gone hoarse.
"I know I can't blame you. I am still jealous."
I look at him.
The cabin lights are dimmed almost to nothing. The red rim around his eyes is impossible to hide.
I reach over and undo his tie, one hand at a time, like I am changing a fact.
He freezes.
I say, "Elliott."
"Yes."
"Bill is gone."
His breath stops.
"Timmy isn't my kid either."
He looks at me like he is afraid to move.
I let myself smile.
"So you're, what — barely first place."
We get back together on a Tuesday. There are no flowers. There is no candlelight.
There is Elliott Pei, standing on the landing outside my apartment in a charcoal coat, holding two black trash bags.
"What are you doing."
"Rule nine of the Courtship Protocol. Handle your partner's domestic refuse without being asked."
His face has the gravity of a Federal Reserve briefing. I laugh until I have to lean on the door frame.
By Friday Cassidy has heard about it.
He arrives with Theo, an unannounced bottle of wine, and Maeve, who looks already tired.
Theo wraps his arms around my leg and starts to cry.
"Mommy. You don't want me anymore."
Elliott peels him off, deadpan. "Call her Aunt Wren."
Theo's lower lip pushes out.
"Daddy is mean."
Cassidy is leaning against the kitchen island enjoying the show. "Big bro. Pre-loaded parenting practice."
Elliott looks at him. "Don't you have something to do."
Cassidy hands Theo to Maeve. "I'm going on a date. Bye."
Maeve kicks him in the shin.
The apartment dissolves into noise.
I stand in the kitchen doorway and watch Elliott try to peel the foil off a Yo-Toddler yogurt. His hands are very steady on hundred-million-dollar contracts and absolutely incompetent on a four-pack.
Theo, with great deliberateness, asks: "Mister. Are you going to be a dad?"
Elliott's hands pause.
He looks up at me.
Then he looks back at Theo, and answers the way Elliott Pei always answers questions he has no data on yet.
"I'll learn."
Something in my chest goes embarrassingly soft.
After everyone leaves, Elliott steps onto the small balcony to take a call. The slider is half-open. He has his back to me.
It is his mother.
His voice is low and even.
"Mom. I'll come to Sunday dinner. Whether Wren comes is her call."
A pause. Eleanor speaking into his ear, audibly tinny from where I'm standing.
"No. She isn't a question the Peis get to answer. She's mine."
He hangs up. He turns around and sees me on the other side of the door.
"You heard."
I nod. "I heard."
He walks back inside. He looks, slightly nervous.
"Was that too much."
I shake my head.
"No."
He looks down at me.
I step forward and put my arms around him.
The rain that started over a hospital corridor three years ago, in some small impossible accounting, finally stops in this hug.