Chapter 2 - Six Months of Silence
The security footage had no sound.
It didn’t need any.
Dominic watched Mara stand on the boutique platform six months earlier while Celeste circled her.
Mara was smiling at first.
Then Celeste said something.
The smile disappeared.
Bianca entered the frame carrying two gowns.
She held one against Mara, shook her head, and exchanged a look with Celeste.
Another comment.
Mara’s shoulders dropped.
Dominic watched his wife step from the platform and cover her stomach.
The exact gesture she had made minutes earlier.
His jaw tightened.
“Turn it off,” Mara whispered.
Dominic did.
He did not ask why she had hidden it.
Not there.
Instead, he took her hand.
“We’re leaving.”
Celeste followed them.
“Dominic.”
He stopped.
“I was helping her.”
Mara’s fingers tightened around his.
Dominic looked at his sister.
“You keep using that word.”
“Because that’s what I was doing.”
“Did Mara ask for your help?”
Celeste hesitated.
That was the answer.
Dominic escorted Mara outside.
Rain had begun falling over Boston. Their driver opened the sedan door, but Dominic dismissed him and drove himself.
Mara sat silently beside him.
For nearly fifteen minutes neither spoke.
Finally Dominic said, “Seven dresses.”
Mara stared through the window.
“Please don’t.”
“I’m not angry with you.”
“That almost makes it worse.”
He glanced toward her.
“Why?”
“Because you should be.”
“For returning dresses?”
“For lying.”
Dominic pulled into the underground garage beneath their Beacon Hill home.
He turned off the engine.
“You were afraid.”
Mara laughed weakly.
“I’m thirty-two years old.”
“Fear doesn’t check identification.”
That almost made her smile.
Almost.
They went upstairs.
Their home was quiet.
Dominic loosened his collar while Mara walked toward the kitchen.
“You don’t have to make dinner.”
“I need something to do.”
He let her.
She opened the refrigerator, stared inside, then closed it without taking anything.
Dominic leaned against the counter.
“When did you last eat?”
“Lunch.”
“What?”
Mara didn’t answer.
“Mara.”
“A salad.”
“What kind?”
Her eyes flashed.
“Please don’t interrogate me.”
“I’m asking whether my wife ate.”
“And I said yes.”
He recognized the wall rising between them.
So he stopped.
“All right.”
That surprised her.
Dominic opened a cabinet, found pasta, and started filling a pot with water.
Mara stared.
“What are you doing?”
“Cooking.”
“You don’t cook.”
“I boil aggressively.”
Despite herself, Mara laughed.
It lasted less than a second.
But Dominic heard it.
Twenty minutes later they sat at the kitchen island eating imperfect pasta.
Dominic did not mention Celeste.
He talked about nothing important.
A broken elevator at one of his hotels.
A contractor who had accidentally ordered six hundred identical lamps.
A neighbor whose dog had apparently decided Dominic’s front steps belonged to him.
Slowly Mara relaxed.
Then Dominic pushed his plate away.
“I love you.”
Mara froze.
“I know.”
“No. I don’t think you do right now.”
Her eyes lowered.
He continued.
“I noticed you stopped wearing certain clothes. I noticed you avoided photographs. I thought you were tired of public events.”
Mara twisted her napkin.
“I should have asked.”
“You did.”
Dominic remembered.
He had.
Several times.
And every time Mara had said she was fine.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because she’s your sister.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It is when you grew up the way I did.”
Dominic waited.
Mara rarely spoke about her childhood.
Her father had left when she was nine. Her mother worked two jobs. Money had always been scarce.
“You grew up in a family where people fight,” Mara said quietly. “I grew up in one where people leave.”
Dominic said nothing.
“If someone was unhappy, they disappeared. My father did. My aunt did. My mother stopped talking to her sister for eleven years.”
She looked at him.
“When Celeste started making comments, I thought if I complained, I would become the woman who separated you from your family.”
“You are my family.”
Mara’s eyes filled.
“She said you would eventually notice.”
“Notice what?”
Mara couldn’t say it.
Dominic waited.
Finally she whispered, “That I’d changed.”
He frowned.
“Changed how?”
“I gained weight.”
Dominic stared at her.
That was it?
Six months of fear.
Seven returned dresses.
Avoided photographs.
Tears in a boutique.
Because his sister had convinced his wife that her body had somehow become unacceptable.
“Mara—”
“She said women around you are photographed constantly. She said people would compare me with your exes.”
“I don’t care.”
“I know you don’t.”
“Then why—”
“Because after someone tells you something often enough, you start hearing it even when they aren’t in the room.”
That silenced him.
Mara looked toward the dark window.
“At first it was little things. She’d suggest another dress. Then another neckline. Then Bianca started sending me fitness accounts.”
Dominic’s expression hardened.
“Then Celeste started ordering clothes one size smaller.”
“Why?”
“To motivate me.”
Dominic closed his eyes briefly.
Mara continued.
“The burgundy gown actually fits.”
He looked at her.
“I tried it yesterday.”
“Then why return it?”
Her voice cracked.
“Because Celeste saw a photograph of me wearing it.”
Dominic went still.
“What did she say?”
Mara looked down.
“She said if I loved you, I wouldn’t embarrass you.”
Silence filled the kitchen.
Dominic stood.
Mara immediately looked frightened.
“Where are you going?”
“Nowhere.”
He walked around the island and crouched beside her.
“I need you to hear me.”
She looked at him.
“You could walk into every gala in Boston wearing a bathrobe and slippers and I would still be proud that you were beside me.”
A tear slipped down Mara’s cheek.
Dominic wiped it away.
“And nobody gets to use my name to make you hate yourself.”
Mara leaned forward.
He wrapped his arms around her.
For the first time in months, she cried without trying to hide it.
Later, after Mara fell asleep, Dominic returned downstairs.
His phone contained eleven missed calls from Celeste.
He ignored them.
Then another message appeared.
From the boutique manager.
There’s more footage. I think you need to see it before tomorrow’s Serrano Foundation gala.
Dominic opened the attached image.
It showed Bianca standing alone inside the boutique office.
In her hand was a stack of small white cards.
The top card contained three words.
Know your size.
But beside Bianca stood someone Dominic had never expected to see involved.
May you like
His mother.
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