Chapter Text
The greenhouse always smelled strongest at night.
Not unpleasantly. Damp soil, crushed leaves, fertilizer faint beneath the sharper scent of citrus blooms Phillip Crane had spent the better part of six months trying to cultivate properly. It was the sort of smell most people noticed only upon entering. He barely registered it anymore.
The university grounds outside had long gone dark, the glass walls reflecting little more than scattered lights from the biology building across the courtyard. Rain tapped softly against the ceiling overhead, steady enough to blur the world outside into watercolor smears of gold and grey.
Phillip adjusted the lamp clipped beside his workstation and leaned closer to the tray of seedlings in front of him. Half the department thought he stayed late because he was devoted to his research. The other half thought he simply disliked going home. Both were true often enough.
He made another note in the margin of his paper, crossed something out, then frowned at his own handwriting. Sometime around ten in the evening, his script always became progressively less legible. A problem, admittedly, when most of his better ideas seemed to arrive after ten in the evening.
His phone buzzed once near his elbow.
An email. Another student asking for an extension. Phillip sighed softly through his nose before typing out a response anyway.
Across the greenhouse, the main door creaked open. “Good Lord,” came a familiar voice, “you do actually live here.”
Phillip glanced up just as Professor Wainwright stepped inside, umbrella dripping onto the stone floor. “Unfortunately,” Phillip said mildly, “the university refuses to let me move into the faculty greenhouse.”
Wainwright snorted, peeling off his scarf. “Give it another budget cut or two.”
Phillip returned his attention to the seedlings. “You’re here late.”
“Department meeting ran over.” Wainwright wandered nearer, peering curiously at one of the trays. “Are these the impossible ones?”
“There’s no such thing as impossible plants.”
“That sounded disturbingly emotional.”
Phillip allowed the ghost of a smile. It was easy enough with colleagues. Easier than family, certainly. Easier than explaining things. People tended to leave him alone if he appeared sufficiently occupied.
Wainwright picked up a stray invitation from beside Phillip’s notebook. “Ah,” he said. “The dean’s dinner.”
Phillip made a quiet sound that might have been annoyance.
“You are attending this year, yes?”
“I attended last year.”
“You arrived forty minutes late and escaped before dessert.”
“I attended.”
“That poor alumni donor spent half the evening trying to introduce you to his niece.”
“She was thirty years younger than me.”
“She was thirty.”
Phillip looked up flatly. “Exactly.”
Wainwright laughed, tossing the invitation back onto the table. “Well. The dean specifically requested your presence this time.”
“Why?”
“You published in Nature, Crane. The university intends to parade you around accordingly.”
Phillip hummed noncommittally.
Wainwright lingered another second before adding, too casually, “And perhaps you’ll finally bring your wife this year.”
There it was. Not cruel. Never cruel. Just curiosity wrapped in politeness.
Phillip kept his eyes on the leaves in front of him as he adjusted one underneath the light. “She’s busy,” he said.
Wainwright made a noise that suggested he’d expected exactly that answer.
The thing was, people became curious when something remained unseen long enough. Most of the faculty had met spouses dozens of times over at holiday dinners, retirement parties, donor galas, dreadful outdoor fundraising events where everyone pretended to enjoy lukewarm champagne under decorative string lights.
But Eloise Crane existed at the university more as a concept than a person.
There had been photographs once, briefly. A wedding announcement in the alumni magazine because apparently the communications office had found it romantic that one of the university’s youngest department heads had married a journalist from the Bridgerton family.
After that, almost nothing.
A rare appearance two years into the marriage at a museum fundraiser. Another at a faculty Christmas dinner where she’d spent half the evening arguing with a political science professor about labor rights while Phillip watched with poorly concealed amusement.
Mostly, though, she remained absent.
Traveling for work, Phillip would explain. Or on an assignment. But always busy.
The answers had changed over the years, becoming shorter each time. Eventually people stopped asking directly mostly.
Wainwright leaned against the worktable. “Forgive me if this is intrusive, but I remain fascinated by the possibility that you invented a wife solely to avoid departmental socialization.”
Phillip deadpanned, “An elaborate commitment to the bit.”
“It would explain quite a lot.”
Phillip shook his head faintly, though another small smile threatened to appear.
Then Wainwright added, “What does she do again?”
The smile disappeared before Phillip even noticed it had gone. “Investigative journalism.”
Immediate understanding crossed Wainwright’s face. Ah. That. People tended to stop prying after that.
Not because journalism itself was alarming, but because Eloise’s particular branch of it carried a certain reputation. Difficult stories. Political corruption. Corporate scandals. The sort of work that occasionally resulted in online harassment campaigns and legal threats and long stretches overseas. It explained her privacy neatly enough. Or at least neatly enough for everyone except Phillip.
Wainwright cleared his throat. “Well. If she ever does decide to emerge from the shadows, tell her the department remains deeply invested in solving the mystery.”
Phillip gave a quiet huff of acknowledgment.
The rain intensified briefly overhead. For a moment neither of them spoke.
Then Wainwright checked his watch and swore softly. “Right. My wife will murder me if I’m late again.”
Phillip nodded toward the door. “Then I advise against dying here. The paperwork would be dreadful.”
“Always so compassionate.”
The door swung shut behind him a moment later, leaving the greenhouse silent again except for rain and the distant hum of the ventilation system.
Phillip stared at the invitation lying beside his notebook.
DR. PHILLIP CRANE & MRS. ELOISE CRANE.
He looked at it for several seconds. Then, with the same tired inevitability as every year before, he slid it carefully into his satchel instead of throwing it away.
The rain had not eased by the time Phillip left campus. By half past eleven, the city had settled into that peculiar quiet that belonged only to weekday nights. Streets shining black underneath streetlamps, storefronts darkened, passing cars reduced to occasional streaks of reflected light across wet pavement.
Phillip drove home mostly on autopilot.
The heater hummed softly. Windshield wipers beat a steady rhythm against the glass. His mind remained half inside the greenhouse, still rearranging research notes and unfinished emails in tired loops. It was only when he turned onto his street that he realized he had forgotten to eat dinner.
Again.
The townhouse stood near the end of a narrow row lined with identical brick facades softened by ivy and rain. Warm light glowed faintly through the downstairs windows. Home. Phillip sat in the parked car for a moment longer than necessary. Then he exhaled once and stepped out into the rain.
Inside, the house greeted him with familiar silence. Not empty silence. Lived-in silence.
There were books stacked unevenly across the coffee table, two mugs abandoned beside the sink from that morning, papers spread over the dining table where he’d been grading assignments three nights ago and never quite finished. Plants occupied nearly every available surface.
Eloise had once accused him, fondly, or even exasperatedly, of turning their home into a ‘glorified conservatory with plumbing’.
Phillip set his keys into the ceramic bowl beside the door. Only then did he notice the umbrella stand still contained hers. Dark purple. Slightly crooked at the handle. He looked at it for a second before shrugging off his coat.
Three years had passed and the house still carried traces of her in ways he no longer consciously registered most days. Or perhaps he did register them and had simply learned to stop reacting. The distinction hardly mattered anymore.
He loosened his tie as he crossed toward the kitchen. The kettle went on automatically. So did the second mug.
Phillip stopped midway through reaching for tea. His hand remained suspended briefly above the cabinet shelf before he quietly put one mug back. It happened less often now. The mistakes.
In the beginning, they had been humiliatingly constant. Two plates. Two towels. Turning to say something aloud before remembering there was no one there to answer. The human mind, it turned out, was embarrassingly slow to adapt to absence.
Phillip rubbed tiredly at the bridge of his nose while waiting for the kettle to boil.
Rain tapped steadily against the kitchen windows. The townhouse was warm, though perhaps slightly too cold upstairs because he kept forgetting to adjust the heating properly. Somewhere in the living room, the grandfather clock Benedict had insisted on giving them as a wedding present ticked softly into the quiet.
Them.
The word still arrived instinctively.
Phillip poured hot water into the mug before carrying it toward the sitting room. A blanket remained draped over one corner of the sofa exactly where he’d left it the previous evening. Beside it sat a half-finished book Eloise had bought him years ago after an argument about whether he ever read fiction voluntarily.
He had reached page ninety-three. Eventually.
Phillip lowered himself onto the sofa with a muted sigh. Across from him, built into the shelves beside the fireplace, sat a framed photograph almost hidden between books and journals. Most people probably would not have noticed it immediately.
Eloise had been laughing in the picture. Not posed laughter. Real laughter. Head tipped back slightly, hair caught by the wind, one gloved hand still gripping Phillip’s coat sleeve as though she had just said something clever and expected him to disagree.
He remembered the exact moment it had been taken. Hyacinth had taken it, actually, while accusing them both of behaving disgustingly in love during a family trip to the countryside.
Phillip looked away again. His phone buzzed against the armrest beside him. A voicemail notification.
He almost ignored it before recognizing Benedict’s name.
Phillip pressed play. “Phillip,” Benedict’s voice announced immediately, carrying the unmistakable background noise of what sounded like an overcrowded restaurant, “Mother says if you fail to appear at Sunday dinner again she’ll begin sending armed retrieval teams.”
A pause.
Then Benedict added, more carefully, “And before you ask, yes, she also specifically requested I remind you that Eloise remains invited should she ever decide to dramatically re-enter society.”
Phillip closed his eyes briefly.
In the background someone, probably Colin, could be heard loudly demanding to know why Benedict had stolen his chips.
Benedict lowered his voice again. “For what it’s worth, I told her perhaps ambushing you with your estranged wife at family dinners was not the gentlest conversational strategy.”
A muffled female voice shouted something unintelligible nearby.
Benedict sighed loudly. “Right. Apparently Hyacinth says I’m being a coward and should simply ask whether you’ve heard from her recently.” Silence stretched for half a second. Then, quieter, “I haven’t, by the way. Heard from her.”
Phillip stared at the dark rain streaking down the windows.
“I thought you’d want to know.”
The message ended with another burst of restaurant noise before cutting off entirely.
Phillip remained still for a long moment, phone loose in his hand. The Bridgertons had eventually learned not to ask directly most days. That did not stop hope from resurfacing periodically anyway.
A sighting from someone’s friend in another city. An article published under Eloise’s name. Rumors that she was overseas. Rumors that she had quit journalism completely. Rumors that she was writing a book. Phillip had stopped trying to sort truth from fiction sometime during the second year.
He set the phone aside.
Down the hallway, near the front closet, hung a dark wool coat he had never managed to move. Not because seeing it hurt too much. Strangely, that was not the problem. The problem was that removing it felt too much like confirmation. Like acknowledging something permanent neither of them had ever actually said aloud.
Phillip leaned back against the sofa and stared at the ceiling. Upstairs, her side of the wardrobe still existed. Not untouched. He was not sentimental enough for that. But intact. As though some stubborn part of him had remained convinced that dismantling the space would be a far greater act of finality than he could tolerate.
The kettle still warmed the kitchen faintly. The clock ticked. Rain struck the windows in soft relentless waves.
The knock came just after midnight. Phillip did not react immediately. Mostly because no one knocked on his door at midnight.
For a moment he assumed he had imagined it beneath the rain.
Then it came again. Three sharp raps against the wood.
Phillip frowned slightly, setting his mug down on the coffee table. Colin, perhaps. He had once appeared uninvited at one in the morning after missing the last train home and declaring Phillip’s sofa ‘psychologically safer’ than sleeping at the station.
Another knock.
Phillip pushed himself upright with a quiet sigh and crossed the hallway barefoot, loosening the sleeves of his shirt absently as he went. The porch light cast a muted glow through the frosted glass beside the door. Beyond it he could make out only the vague silhouette of someone standing beneath the rain.
A woman.
Something in his chest tightened before his mind could catch up. Ridiculous.
Phillip unlocked the door anyway. Cold rain-scented air drifted immediately into the hallway.
And there she was.
Eloise Bridgerton, no, Eloise Crane, stood under the porch light with rain gathered along the shoulders of her coat, one hand still wrapped around the strap of a worn leather bag.
For one disorienting second, Phillip genuinely thought he must still be asleep on the sofa. Because his mind knew this shape too well.
Knew the angle of her shoulders. The restless energy barely contained within stillness. The exact shade of chestnut hair now slightly longer than he remembered, damp from rain and curling faintly near her jaw.
But memory was one thing. Reality was another.
Eloise looked older.
Not noticeably. Not enough that a stranger would catch it immediately. Just… sharpened somehow.
There were faint shadows beneath her eyes. New tension carved subtly around her mouth. She looked thinner than before, though perhaps that was simply the effect of exhaustion. And she looked like someone prepared to leave again at any moment.
Phillip realized distantly that neither of them had spoken. Rainwater dripped steadily from the edge of the porch roof.
Eloise’s gaze moved over his face with something painfully close to uncertainty. “Hi.”
Her voice nearly undid him.
Not because it was emotional but because it sounded exactly the same. Low and slightly rough around the edges, as though every sentence emerged half a second faster than breathing properly allowed. Eloise had always sounded like that, like someone perpetually in the middle of an argument with the world. Even exhausted, even quiet, there remained that faint rasp under her words that years of late nights, too much coffee, and speaking too quickly had never softened.
Phillip knew that voice embarrassingly well.
Three years.
Three years, and she still sounded like home.
Phillip heard himself answer before he entirely meant to. “You’re alive.”
The words landed harder than he intended. Eloise blinked once. Something flickered across her expression. Guilt perhaps, or pain. But she recovered quickly. “Yes,” she said quietly. “I am.”
Silence returned. Phillip could not seem to force his body to move. Because now that she stood in front of him, real and breathing and soaked by London rain, another realization arrived with brutal clarity. He had spent three years imagining this moment.
Angrily sometimes. Desperately others.
He had imagined shouting. Demanding explanations. Slamming the door. Pulling her into his arms. Instead he stood frozen in his own hallway staring at his wife as though language itself had abandoned him.
Eloise shifted slightly under his gaze. “I know this is-”
“What are you doing here?”
The question emerged rougher than intended. Not cruel. Worse, perhaps. Confused.
Because Phillip truly did not understand.
Eloise’s fingers tightened subtly around her bag strap. “I needed to see you.”
Not I missed you. Not I’m sorry.
Phillip noticed the distinction immediately.
The rain intensified briefly behind her, tapping harder against the pavement. Eloise glanced once over her shoulder toward the dark street before looking back at him.
That tiny movement did something strange to Phillip’s chest. Alertness. Not casual nervousness. The kind that suggested habit. Fear.
“You’re drenched,” he said automatically.
Eloise looked almost startled by the observation. As though she had expected anger first.
Phillip hated himself slightly for noticing that too.
Another long silence stretched between them. Then, carefully she whispered, “May I come in?”
Phillip’s hand tightened around the edge of the door. And there it was. The moment everything balanced upon.
Because letting her inside meant something. It meant this stopped being a ghost story. Stopped being memory. Stopped being grief safely contained inside routine and distance and unanswered questions.
If he let her in, then she became real again. And Phillip was not completely certain he remembered how to survive that.
Eloise must have seen something of the conflict on his face because her expression shifted minutely, retreating behind composure. “If this is a bad time-”
“It’s midnight.”
A faint almost-smile touched her mouth then vanished. “Yes,” she said quietly. “You were always awake at hours like this.”
The words carried a familiarity that hit harder than it should have. Not openly affectionate. Just the sort of observation only someone who had once built a life around him would make.
As though despite everything, Eloise still remembered exactly when Phillip stopped being able to sleep.
The familiarity of it hit him unexpectedly hard. Phillip suddenly became acutely aware that she was standing three feet away after three years of absence and he still knew precisely how she would sound teasing him. Something inside him cracked quietly at the edges.
Eloise glanced once more toward the street.
Phillip followed the movement instinctively. “There’s no one there,” he said.
“I know.” But she checked anyway.
Phillip felt his stomach tighten. Without another word, he stepped aside.
Eloise hesitated only briefly before crossing the threshold. The smell of rain and cold air followed her into the house.
Phillip closed the door carefully behind them. The sound echoed louder than it should have.
For a moment neither moved. Eloise stood just inside the hallway, wet hair clinging slightly to her coat collar as her eyes swept slowly across the room.
Phillip watched realization unfold across her face in increments. The umbrella stand. The bookshelf. The lamp beside the sofa. Nothing had changed enough.
And somehow that seemed to unsettle her more than anger would have. “You redecorated,” she said finally.
Phillip blinked once before following her gaze toward the living room. A new chair near the fireplace. Different curtains. One additional bookshelf.
“That was two years ago.”
Eloise swallowed. “Right.”
The silence that followed felt enormous.
Then Phillip heard himself ask quietly, “Does your family know where you are?”
Eloise looked at him immediately. “No.”
Of course not. Because apparently chaos still entered rooms wearing her face. Phillip exhaled slowly through his nose.
Behind Eloise, rain continued to strike the windows in relentless soft waves. And standing there in his hallway, soaked from the storm and staring at the woman who had vanished from his life without explanation, Phillip realized one terrifying thing with absolute certainty, some part of him had never truly believed she would come back.
Which meant some far more reckless part still loved her enough that she only had to appear in his doorway for the entire carefully constructed architecture of his grief to begin collapsing at once.
Eloise remained near the doorway a moment too long, as though uncertain what version of herself was permitted inside this house.
Phillip took her coat before he could think better of it. The motion startled both of them slightly. Old instincts, apparently, survived abandonment remarkably well.
“Thank you,” Eloise murmured.
Phillip nodded once, hanging the coat beside his own. Beside her old one. The realization struck a second too late.
Eloise noticed. Her gaze lingered briefly on the dark wool coat that had occupied the same hook for three years before she looked away again with careful neutrality.
Phillip cleared his throat lightly. “You can leave your bag there.”
Another nod.
Everything between them suddenly felt absurdly formal. As though they were strangers attempting to imitate a marriage they both remembered too vividly.
Phillip gestured vaguely toward the sitting room. “Do you want tea?”
Eloise blinked at him once, visibly caught off guard. “You’re offering me tea.”
“You’re soaked.”
“That wasn’t quite the observation.”
Phillip resisted the urge to close his eyes. Right. There it was. The problem with Eloise. She heard too much beneath words.
“It’s cold outside,” he said instead.
A pause.
Then, quietly she nodded, “Yes. Tea would be nice.”
Phillip moved toward the kitchen mostly because standing still near her felt increasingly impossible.
He could feel Eloise looking around as she followed him. Not openly. Just small glances that carried too much history behind them.
The house had changed in details over the years. A different lamp near the stairs. More plants. Less clutter on the dining table because Phillip had finally accepted that paper organization systems did, in fact, exist.
But the bones of it remained unmistakably theirs.
Or perhaps that was the problem. Nothing had changed enough.
Phillip busied himself with the kettle while Eloise hovered near the kitchen doorway.
For several seconds neither spoke. Then Eloise said carefully, “You kept the monstera alive. You said it was impossible to kill.”
Phillip glanced automatically toward the enormous plant near the window. “Yes, but I severely overestimated your willingness to water things unrelated to botany.”
“I water plenty of things related to botany.”
“That is exactly the sort of loophole answer I expected.”
There it was again. That terrifying ease. Like no time had passed at all.
Phillip gripped the edge of the counter slightly harder. The kettle began to hum softly between them.
Eloise’s eyes drifted across the kitchen. The coffee machine she bought on impulse because she claimed Phillip’s old one sounded like it belonged in a museum. The crooked ceramic bowl Hyacinth made during her brief pottery phase. The bookshelf overflowing with cookbooks neither of them actually used properly.
And then... Her gaze stopped.
Phillip followed it instinctively. The faculty gala invitation still sat partially visible near his satchel on the counter. Cream cardstock. University seal. Elegant lettering.
DR. PHILLIP CRANE & MRS. ELOISE CRANE.
Eloise went very still.
Phillip felt it immediately. The sharp quiet shift in the room.
Slowly, Eloise stepped closer toward the invitation. “You’ve been attending the dean’s dinner?” she asked, though her attention remained fixed on the envelope.
Phillip frowned faintly. “Unfortunately.”
Eloise picked it up carefully.
Phillip watched realization unfold across her expression in increments. Not old. Not forgotten in a drawer. But this year’s invitation.
Addressed to both of them.
Her throat moved once before she spoke. “You still tell people you’re married.”
Phillip stared at her, genuinely confused by the question. “I am married.”
Eloise looked up slowly. And for the first time since entering the house, something in her composure visibly cracked. Not completely. Just enough for Phillip to glimpse genuine shock underneath.
As though she had arrived tonight fully expecting to find evidence that he had erased her. Divorce papers. A new girlfriend. An empty wardrobe.
Instead she had found her coat still hanging beside his. Found invitations still printed with her name. Found Phillip answering her absence not by denying the marriage but by carrying it alone.
Eloise set the envelope back down with unusual care. “You could have divorced me,” she said quietly.
Phillip looked away first. The kettle clicked off behind him.
For a moment he said nothing at all. Because the truthful answer was humiliatingly simple. He never managed to stop believing she might come back.
Instead Phillip reached for the mugs. “You disappeared without explanation,” he said evenly. “The paperwork seemed slightly secondary.”
Eloise inhaled softly. Not quite hurt nor relief. Something worse.
Phillip handed her the tea carefully, avoiding brushing her fingers though he remained painfully aware of how easy it would have been.
Eloise wrapped both hands around the mug immediately, absorbing warmth like someone unused to standing still long enough for comfort. That unsettled him more than he wanted to admit.
“You look tired,” he heard himself say.
Eloise huffed a faint laugh without humor. “That’s generous.”
“You always sound more sarcastic when exhausted.”
Her eyes lifted to his instantly. Again with that look. That awful awareness that he still knew her too well.
Phillip regretted the observation almost immediately. Not because it was untrue. Because it sounded intimate. And intimacy with Eloise had always been the fastest route toward emotional ruin.
Silence settled again, softer this time.
Then Phillip noticed it once more. The way Eloise’s attention kept flicking subtly toward the front of the house. Toward the windows. The street beyond them.
Not random. But habitual. Almost controlled.
Fear crawled quietly up Phillip’s spine. He set his mug down. “Eloise.”
Her gaze snapped back immediately.
“Are you in trouble?”
Too fast, she answered, “No.”
Phillip held her eyes. A beat passed. Two.
Then Eloise exhaled slowly into her tea. “Not exactly.”
Which was not remotely reassuring.
Phillip did not look away. “Not exactly,” he repeated.
Eloise took a careful sip of tea that was very obviously too hot. A stalling tactic.
Phillip knew because she had been doing variations of it for nearly a decade. When they first met, she used to redirect conversations by asking pointed questions instead. During arguments, she cleaned things aggressively while pretending not to avoid the actual topic. Later, after they married, she developed subtler methods, throwaway observations, sudden curiosity, cleverly timed sarcasm.
Anything to create movement away from herself. Anything to avoid standing still inside vulnerability for too long.
Phillip folded his arms lightly. “What does ‘not exactly’ mean?”
Eloise lowered the mug slowly. “It means I’m not currently being chased through alleyways by mysterious government operatives, if that helps.”
“It does not help.”
“That’s unfortunate.”
“Eloise.”
Something in his voice must have landed too close to genuine concern because her expression softened for half a second before retreating again.
“I’m tired,” she said quietly. “And wet. And standing in my own kitchen after three years trying very hard not to have a nervous breakdown over the fact that you still own that horrific coffee machine I bought you.”
There it was. Deflection. Elegant enough that most people probably would have followed willingly.
Phillip almost did anyway. He glanced automatically toward the silver machine near the counter. “It makes decent coffee.”
“It sounds like industrial machinery.”
“It was expensive.”
“You said that every morning for two years.”
“And you ignored me every morning for two years.”
A faint almost-smile touched Eloise’s mouth before disappearing again. It would be so easy to fall back into this. That frightened him more than anger would have.
Eloise’s eyes drifted away from him then, moving slowly across the kitchen with the careful attention of someone reacquainting herself with a place she once knew intimately. “You painted the walls,” she said after a moment.
Phillip blinked once, caught briefly off guard by the change in subject. “The old color was awful.”
“You said the old color had character.”
“I was wrong.”
“You’re rarely that self-aware.”
Phillip exhaled something painfully close to a laugh. There she was again. Not the stranger from his doorway. Not the ghost he had spent years imagining.
His wife.
Still capable of sliding into conversation beside him like no time had passed at all.
Eloise stepped farther into the kitchen, fingertips brushing lightly against the edge of the counter as she looked around. “You finally replaced the cabinet handles.”
“One fell off.”
“In 2021.”
“I was busy.”
“You have three doctoral students.”
“They are tragically useless at home repair.”
The ease between them lasted only a few seconds before Phillip noticed it again. The way her shoulders loosened when the conversation drifted toward harmless things. The way tension immediately returned whenever silence threatened to deepen.
She was steering them deliberately. Away from danger. Away from explanations. Away from whatever had brought her back here tonight looking over her shoulder every thirty seconds.
And the worst part was that Phillip knew exactly how to let her. Because he had spent years loving someone who treated difficult emotions like live explosives.
Eventually he looked away first. Not surrender exactly, just recognition. If Eloise did not want to answer a question, forcing her rarely accomplished anything except pushing her farther behind herself.
So Phillip stopped asking. At least for now.
Instead he reached for plates automatically. “I haven’t eaten,” he said.
Eloise blinked. “At midnight?”
“You used to complain I forgot dinner whenever I was working.”
“You used to forget because you entered what I can only describe as photosynthesis-induced dissociation.”
“That is not a medical condition.”
“It should be.”
Phillip moved around the kitchen gathering leftovers with practiced efficiency while Eloise watched quietly from the counter.
And despite everything, despite the confusion still clawing beneath his ribs, despite the unanswered questions crowding the room, something inside him eased painfully at the familiarity of her presence there. Like his body remembered her before his mind permitted it to.
Twenty minutes later they sat across from one another at the dining table, half-finished plates between them while rain battered steadily against the windows.
Eloise had barely touched her food. Of course Phillip noticed. But he said nothing.
Silence fell again.
He should ask. Any sane person would ask. Where were you? Why did you leave? Why now? Who are you afraid of?
Instead he heard himself say, “Benedict still thinks you deliberately vanished to avoid attending family holidays.”
To his surprise, Eloise laughed softly. The sound hit him like memory made physical. “He’s not totally wrong.”
“You disappeared for three years, Eloise.”
The laughter faded immediately.
Phillip regretted the sharpness of the words the second they left him, but not enough to apologize. Because there it was at last. The wound beneath everything else.
Three years.
Three years of explaining her absence badly. Three years of pretending he understood something he did not. Three years of waking up every morning furious enough to move on and every night still married to her.
Eloise stared down at her untouched food. “I know how long it’s been.”
“No,” Phillip said quietly. “I don’t think you do.”
That finally made her look at him. And suddenly the room felt much too small.
Phillip forced himself to look away first. “Why now?” he asked.
Not why did you leave. He still could not make himself ask that yet.
Eloise was silent long enough that he wondered if she would answer at all. Finally, “I needed to come back.”
Again that wording. Needed. Not wanted.
His jaw tightened slightly. “For how long?”
“I don’t know yet.”
Yet.
The tiny word lodged itself somewhere painful under his ribs.
Phillip set his fork down carefully. “Are you planning to disappear again?”
Eloise flinched. Small. Almost imperceptible. But Phillip saw it anyway. And because he was tired and hurt and still disastrously in love with her, the sight made him feel immediately cruel.
Eloise looked toward the rain-dark windows again before answering. “I’m trying not to.”
The honesty of it terrified him more than a lie would have.