The light hits them too harshly as they stumble out into the foyer, causing Laura to squint against the bright, gold-tinted glare. Daniel is half a step ahead, already smoothing his shirt like he’s resetting the scene. She follows him down the steps in silence, her body still humming from his touch. Beneath the silk of her dress, her skin is damp, her breath not yet fully settled, and there’s a dull, guilty ache between her thighs. The noise in the room has shifted, warped into something shrill and unfamiliar. For a moment, she feels like she’s stepped out of one world and into another.
Everything has changed. Gone is the soft, satiny buzz of black-tie chatter; in its place is something sharper and scattered. The air crackles with urgency. Journalists cluster in tight, anxious knots; murmuring, paging, moving with the relentless pace of someone who's just caught the scent of a story. Several have their pagers in hand already, thumbing numbers with practiced speed, their faces lit up ghostly green. One man is on a landline near the coat check, speaking low and fast, his free hand already reaching for his jacket. Another is slipping out the front doors without saying goodbye.52Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡp7WNyJOiDc
And then another. And then another.
Laura pauses on the steps.
It isn’t clear what’s happened yet, but she knows that feeling. That delicious ripple of adrenaline, buried just beneath the skin. That collective breath being held without realizing. It’s the same electric, awful pull she felt the day the towers were hit in ‘93—before the headlines, before the panic. When something in the air had changed and wouldn’t change back.
She glances at Daniel by her elbow, staring up into his face for some reassurance, although it’s clear he’s just as puzzled as she is. His brow is furrowed faintly, his pale grey eyes scanning the room. But there’s no anchor in his look, no steadiness to offer her. Just the same questions she has, stacked behind his quiet.
“Laura!”
It’s Natalie, beautiful and resolute, fighting through the thinning crowd with a clipped urgency. Her gold evening dress shimmers, clinging to her in the heat as sweat beads like jewellery at her collarbone. Her curls have slipped from their pins, her lipstick is still smudged, but her eyes are sharp. Focused. Urgent.
And Laura has never been so relieved to see her.
“There you are,” Natalie says breathlessly, skidding to a stop in front of them.“Where the hell have you been, I’ve been looking all over for you?” A beat of silence blooms as Natalie’s gaze snags onto Laura’s shoulder—and stays there.
Frowning, Laura follows her line of sight and realizes what she’s seen: the strap of her dress has slipped down her shoulder, the black silk drooping against her arm to reveal the top of her white breast and the dusky pink crescent of her nipple.
At that same moment, it’s clear that Daniel sees it too, because his hand twitches toward her instinctively; his fingers starting to lift, preparing to fix it himself. He’s done it before, in private. In his apartment. In his bed.
But then he stops, not because he suddenly thinks better of it, but because he knows that Natalie is watching. Suspended between reflex and discretion, his hand hovers mid-air. Although the gesture lasts no more than a second, it lands with weight.
Laura catches it. So does Natalie, who without a word, steps forward to adjust the strap herself, easing it back onto Laura’s shoulder with a quiet, protective grace.
“Boss,” says Natalie, her voice low and careful as it cuts through the strange, suspended quiet that has settled between them. “We’ve got a story breaking.”
“What kind of story?” Daniel turns to her, his expression sharpening like a lens brought into focus.
“A car crash. Uptown. There was a motorcade involved. They’re saying a former President was in the vehicle.”
“Which President?” Daniel asks, already shifting into action. His hand moves to his pocket for a pen as the muscle in his jaw flexes. “Did they say who?”
“President Maraschino.” Natalie blanches as the words slip from her mouth, haunting and momentous. “We’re still waiting on a family statement, but—” her voice lowers, just a notch as if out of respect for Laura. “A nurse at the hospital has already leaked something.”
“Go on,” Daniel presses.
The words hang in the air, heavy as stone. Natalie blinks fast, like she’s trying to keep control, but her mouth trembles slightly, and for a moment she looks like she might cry. She stares at Daniel’s face, searching for something humane, but he’s all profession.
Meanwhile, Laura doesn’t speak. She can’t. The world has just gone quiet inside her head. Everything is muffled, far away. Like hearing news underwater.
“I’ll need you both at the office,” Daniel says, already twisting toward the doors. His tone is clipped and commanding, and it’s clear now that instinct has kicked in; reporter mode engaged, all emotion postponed. “It’ll be quicker if we all take my car.”
He reaches for her then—Laura—catching her arm. Maybe to guide her. Maybe just to keep her tethered.
“Laura,” he says, like he’s calling her back into herself.
But her body doesn’t move.
Because she’s not there.
Not fully. Not yet.
“I need to call him,” Laura says, her voice thin but clear as she looks up at him—not angry, not fragile, just stunned as she struggles to process what she’s heard.
Still holding her arm, Daniel blinks at her. “What?”
“My husband’s father has just been hurt,” she says, each word deliberate as if she’s trying to get herself to understand that as much as him. “Most likely killed. I need to call him. I need to call Tommy.”
The silence that follows is instant and dense. Even the murmur of the crowd seems to quiet around them.
“Ex-husband,” says Daniel, too quickly—reflex, not fact. His answer is automatic, almost instantaneous as if the distinction might lessen the gravity or somehow make it hurt less.
But Natalie doesn't hesitate to correct him.
“They’re still married,” she says, her tone clipped and unwavering. “They’re separated, not divorced.”
Daniel falters, the line between his silvery brows deepening, and for a moment, he looks like he might argue, although there’s nothing to say. He knows Natalie’s right, he just didn’t remember.
Or perhaps he didn’t want to.
Without saying anything, Natalie, ever the early adopter, digs into her clutch and produces a bulky cell, offering it out to Laura without a moment’s hesitation.
“Here,” she says gently. “Use mine.”
Laura thanks her with the faintest smile and takes the phone, although her hands are shaking so badly she nearly fumbles it. She clutches it to her chest, guarded and possessive as if it’s something that might be taken from her if she doesn’t hold on tight enough.
Then she turns and walks away.
Behind her, the noise of the crowd begins to fade, its sharp edges softened by distance and shadow. Her heels echo in the vastness of the foyer, each step louder than the last, as she slips beyond the velvet rope and into the hush of a quieter wing.
Dim light. Cold stone. Silence thick enough to breathe.
Six months. That’s how long it had been since her marriage to the President’s son had come undone. Not with an explosive bang like in the movies, but with a quiet, painful unravelling. She and Tommy had been struggling for a while, although you’d never know it from the headlines. The press still called them golden until the very end. New York’s favourite fairytale couple. Enviable. Desirable. Perfect in every way.
Even the morning he walked out on her; one week before Christmas, the gifts still frosted in their shiny paper, and the apartment smelling of pine and cinnamon, there had been no spectacle. Just a heavy, deafening silence after the door had closed behind him.
Laura hadn’t heard from Tommy since then. Her only way of knowing anything about him was what she glimpsed of him in passing, through the pages of magazines and grainy tabloid spreads: him jogging in Battery Park with his dog, striding into the prosecutor’s office in his pristine white shirtsleeves, or laughing in restaurants and cafes with friends she used to know.
The President’s death was about change everything.
“Laura,” a voice pleads behind her from the doorway.
It’s Daniel. No doubt come to talk her out of it.
She doesn’t turn. Just stands there, her spine drawn tall, the museum’s cold quiet pressing in around her. She hears the muted hush of his shoes against the carpet, the careful control of his breath as he closes the distance. Not too close—yet. But close enough that his presence starts to wrap around her like smoke.
“You don’t have to go through with this,” he says gently beside her ear. “Not tonight.”
Daniel’s voice is soft and intimate. That damn voice. The one he uses when she’s curled up against him in the dark, when he slides his hands beneath the sheets and makes her forget every name but his.
“You’re in shock,” he continues. “You’re upset. You’re not thinking clearly, Laura. Come home with me.”
He takes another step, closer now, the heat bleeding off his body and into hers.
“We’ll let Natalie run the office tonight. She’ll love it—it’s what she’s hungry for. And you,” he echoes, trailing a hand up her bare arm. “Come home with me.”
Still, she doesn’t move.
“I’ll pour you a drink,” he murmurs. “Light a candle, run you a bath. Pull you into my lap the way I always do. You like that, don’t you?“ His voice dips lower, even darker. “When I take care of you?”
Careful and practiced, his arms slide around her waist, tucking his face into the curve of her shoulder like he belongs there. “Let me fuck it all away.”
The suggestion is intimate and obscene all at once; tantalising, tempting, hitting her low and sweet.
God—she wants to say yes. Because he knows how to make her feel wanted. Because she doesn’t know how to sit alone in a room full of memory and grief. Because even now, some twisted, aching part of her wants Daniel to win.
He reaches for her hand, fingers brushing lightly at the edge of the phone. Testing. Easing. Wanting to take it.
“Give it to me,” he murmurs. “Just for now.”
But Laura doesn’t let go. Her grip tightens, her knuckles pale against the plastic, as if the phone is the only thing anchoring her to herself.
“Don’t,” she says quietly. Her voice is shaking and small, but she twists away from him as she says it.
Daniel doesn’t respond. Instead, fingers hover, stalling in mid-air, before he lets them fall away from hers. The contact breaks, but the weight of him, his presence, his breath, his want, still lingers in the space between them.
Laura doesn’t look at him. She can’t. If she does, she might crumble. So she simply turns away, her heart pounding in her chest, the phone clenched so tightly in her hand she’s afraid she might crack the casing.
One footstep, then another. The sound of Daniel doesn’t follow, so she keeps on walking until she’s far enough away from him to breathe.
Her thumb hesitates over the buttons.
Six months of silence.
And now this?
Laura wavers, trying to stop the swirling in her mind. Then, before she can stop herself, and with a breath that feels like a dive into something irreversible, she dials the private number she has memorised.
The line rings once. Twice. Three times.
Then, there is a soft click, and the quiet sound of breath, low and hesitant, before the voice she hasn’t heard in half a year finds its way back to her.
“Hello?”
Her husband’s voice: one word, but it’s enough.
Laura’s throat tightens. Her knees nearly buckle beneath her. She sinks down onto the nearest bench, the cold marble against the backs of her thighs barely registering as the tears hit fast. Hot and silent at first, then suddenly not so silent. Her hand flies to her mouth to smother the sob that racks through her.
“Laura?” Tommy’s voice is thick on the other line. “Is that—are you okay?”
She tries to answer, to reassure him, to comfort him like she set out to, but her voice breaks in the back of her throat. A sound escapes, raw and aching, and that’s all it takes for him to say:
“Don’t cry.” Tommy begs. “Christ, Laura. You know I can’t stand it when you cry.”
Laura breaks as the sob rises through her chest and spills out of her in helpless waves. Her shoulders curl in, the phone trembling in her grip as she presses her free hand to her forehead, willing herself to stop.
“I’m sorry,” she gasps out through the tears. “I’m sorry, I just—God, you should be the one crying. I heard about your father and I just thought I should call.”
“I knew you would,” Tommy admits quietly. “I hoped you would. I kept waiting.”
Laura closes her eyes, her breath catching in her throat again, but she holds it back this time. Her grip on the phone tightens, steadying.
“I didn’t know if I should,” she says. “I didn’t know if I could. I didn’t know if you’d want me to.”
“You could always call me, Laura.” Tommy says it like it’s still true, as if nothing between them has changed.
“I don’t know what to say,” she admits with a quiet sniff. “I’m useless at stuff like this.”
Death, she means. The fumbling awkwardness of it. The terrible weight of it that hangs in the air like something unspeakable. Death numbs her, dulling the edges of everything until she can’t quite feel at all.
She tries again, softer this time.
“Where are you?”
“Hyannis,” he says.
She imagines him sitting by the window of the summer house they used to go to—the white-shingled one on the bluff, with the cracked porch swing and the sharp smell of salt in the air. That house had once been laughter and linen and late-morning coffee. She can almost see him there now: tanned elbows on the sill, staring out at the grey Atlantic like it might give him something back.
“I’ve been trying to get a plane out,” Tommy adds. “But everything’s backed up. My mother’s furious. She didn’t want to have to make the statement without me.”
Laura swallows the lump rising in her throat.
“Is Birdie at the hospital?” She asks.
“Yes,” Tommy says, and she can hear him shifting, like he’s gotten up or turned away from the window. “She’s been there since they brought him in. Refused to leave him apparently. Just kept saying it was her duty.”
That sounds like Birdie. Steady. Impeccable. Unshaken even in the worst of storms.
“She likes to have her way,” Tommy adds, his voice laced with tired affection. “Always has. Even the doctors are afraid to contradict her. She told them she’d make the statement herself if I didn’t get there in time, which I probably won’t now. Until the morning.”
There’s a pause—quiet, weighted. When he speaks again, his tone shifts.
“She asked if I’d spoken to you,” he says after a moment. “She’ll want you there. At the funeral.”
Laura’s breath catches. Not because it’s unexpected, but because it’s suddenly real now—this looming, public farewell to a man she once called family. A man who, even at his most distant, had always treated her with a certain fatherly pride.
“Birdie…” Tommy continues, with a dry exhale. “Is all about appearances. You know that. Always has been. She thinks it’s proper. That you should be there. You and I—”he falters, “—we’re still married, right? At least on paper.
The words land heavier than she expects, blunt and unadorned.
“Until the dust settles,” he adds, more gently. “That’s what she said.”
Laura tilts her head back against the stone wall behind her, her eyes drifting toward the ceiling, though she isn’t really seeing it. She’ll want you there. Until the dust settles.
It shouldn’t surprise her. Unlike her, Birdie had always understood the choreography of grief; how to wear it well, how to fold sorrow into grace and pearls and posture. How to wrap devastation in silk gloves and step into the spotlight without ever faltering. Her mourning would be immaculate, curated down to the tilt of her head, the shade of her veil. Because appearances mattered. Appearances lasted.
And Laura, despite everything, had once played the part too. She’d known how to smile for cameras even when her stomach churned, how to clasp Tommy’s hand with just the right amount of public affection, how to say the right words in the right order while blinking under the sting of flashbulbs.
But that was before.
Now, the idea of stepping back into that world makes her stomach twist. She can already see it: the cathedral steps, sharp with marble and judgment. The rows of suited mourners, the rustle of designer dresses. The hush that falls when she arrives. There she is. The golden one. The wife who disappeared.
Or worse: The one he left.
Would Tommy reach for her hand? Would she take it?
Or would he keep his distance, and leave her drifting at the edge of something she used to belong to?
And then there were the photos as well. There would always be photos. Her posture, her expression, her dress; every little detail flattened and dissected and passed around like gossip.
And yet… some part of her still couldn’t imagine not being there.
She hadn’t spoken to President Maraschino in months. Not since the separation. But he had never once made her feel unwelcome. He had called her kiddo. He had pressed a kiss to her forehead every Christmas. He had raised his glass to her at her wedding.
He had made her feel, if not quite like a daughter, then something very, very close to it.
And how do you stay away from that? How do you let someone else take your place on the pew?
She presses her palm to her chest, trying to still the swell beneath her ribs. Her fingers brush the chain she hasn’t realized she’s still wearing, gold and warm from her skin. The necklace Tommy gave her the week they got engaged.
Still married, she thinks. At least on paper.
And yet somehow, not at all.
The silence stretches out between them, soft but weighted, like snow settling on a rooftop. Laura doesn’t speak—she can’t speak. There’s too much between the lines, too much history suspended in the pause. Things that once were. Things that still ache. Things without names.
“Laura?” Tommy says gently.
“I’m here, Tommy.”
“When I get in tomorrow…” He hesitates, and she hears it—the same quiet uncertainty she remembers from before, from the final days, from the conversations that never quite finished. “Would you meet me?”
Her heart lifts and sinks in the same breath. There’s warmth in the offer, but also a gravity that makes her throat tighten. She doesn’t know what meet me means anymore. She doesn’t know what she’s hoping it might.
She presses her hand to her chest.
“I don’t know,” she says, and even to her own ears, the words sound fragile. “I don’t know if it’s a good idea.”
“It doesn’t have to be anything,” he says quickly. “No pressure. No expectations. I’d just…like to see you. That’s all.”
Laura nods, slowly, even though he can’t see it, even though she wants to say yes. She also wants to hang up on him and disappear into the dark.
“Can I call you when I land?” he asks.
There’s another pause. Then finally, quietly:
“Yeah,” she says. “Call me.” There’s nothing more to add. No clean ending. Just the static hush of the line and the slow return of her breath.
Then the call ends, and Laura is alone again, sitting in the cold wing of a museum that suddenly feels much too quiet.
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