One Night Only by Catherine Walsh

25

We stay up all night to watch the sunrise.

Doing so made me wonder why I never had before. Especially considering all the late nights I’ve had in this city. But usually, I spend them in clubs, stumbling out into daylight that was already there. Never waiting for it. Waiting for it even when I didn’t want it.

Sunrise means Declan getting on a plane and me going home wondering if he’s right and if my mind will whir and doubt and change. But in the hours we spend talking it doesn’t change once. It doesn’t change when he walks me out of the hotel, his jacket around my shoulders. It doesn’t change when he kisses me goodbye and puts me into a cab behind a bleary-eyed driver at the end of his shift.

When I get home, Claire’s bedroom door is shut and Mark’s tie is draped over the back of the sofa and I smile and I smile and I smile as I sneak into my room and drop instantly into an exhausted sleep.

He doesn’t give me time to change my mind.

If I had any doubt our professional relationship was officially over, it ends the moment I wake and see the first text from him. He continues to message constantly over the next few days. Random, inane things that don’t help my increasingly tetchy need for him to come back. He sends a photo of his breakfast, his lunch. A selfie at the airport, in his hotel room. And questions. Endless questions. Where do I want to eat when he gets back? Have I ever been to the Natural History Museum? Have I ever been to the Natural History Museum at night? What’s my favorite bird? How do I not have a favorite bird?

They’re all stupid. I cling to every one of them. More than cling. I jump every time my phone vibrates. And when the hours go by with nothing from him, I stare at the dark screen as though willing the next text come through. Sometimes I turn it off and put it in my purse or my desk drawer to try and wean myself off it but I never last. Barely ten minutes will pass before I’m frantically turning it back on, waiting for the one that tells me he’s back in New York.

I wouldn’t put it past him to show up randomly either. The mere thought of it sends me into a panic, upping my personal grooming routine and canceling plans in case he returns. Claire tells me suspiciously at one point that she’s never seen the apartment looking so clean and I take to sitting at my bedroom window with what I know must be a “when will my husband return from war” vibe. It’s pathetic. I’m pathetic. And I don’t give a damn.

“You could just ask him,” Claire tells me at one point as if it’s that simple.

I mean it is. But it’s not.

A few dayshe said. Only a few days go by and he doesn’t return. And he doesn’t mention anything about it. There’s no, see you soon! or hey, can’t wait to have sex again! Just another check-in. Another selfie. Not even a sexy selfie. Can I ask for a sexy selfie? I take a dozen ones of myself but chicken out of sending them.

Maybe I’m just hormonal. Maybe I’m a paranoid woman with no self-respect but it’s hard to stop the various reasons for why he doesn’t come back, running from the most likely (he is busy and will be back in a few days) to the extreme (he’s lying dead in a ditch somewhere or is on the run from the law).

But if he’d just freaking text me.

“Ben’s jumping ship.”

I look up from my phone as Will slides into the seat opposite me. The office kitchen is empty except for us, most people taking advantage of their lunch break to go lie outside in the sun.

“Where’s he going?”

“Stovers,” he says, naming one our biggest competitors.

“Shit.”

He nods in agreement, stealing some of my blueberries. I feel a little ill. Amanda. Chris. Ethan went just after Christmas. Janelle just before. We knew the firm wasn’t exactly in trouble, but we weren’t raking in the big clients either. Harvey’s tightening his belt and if I don’t start making traction…

“You think he knows something the rest of us don’t?” I ask. “Harvey wouldn’t do another round of cuts, would he?”

Will shrugs, looking unusually down, and another thought hits me as I go through the list of people in my mind.

They all have something in common. They all have someone here doing the exact same job.

“You’re in the middle of Declan’s office,” he says as if reading my mind.

“That’s small fry and you know it. It’s not pulling enough money to keep me if it’s a choice between Matthias and me.” I sit back, tapping my fingers on my phone. “This is the part where you say I’m wrong.”

“I don’t know anymore. You ask Harvey and he’ll deny anything’s going on. But the proof is in the pie.”

“Pudding.”

“What?”

“Proof is in the pudding.” I sigh, standing up.

“Where are you going?”

“To follow up on some old contacts.” Like I’ve been doing all summer. All in the vain hope that someone who didn’t want to move forward with a project has suddenly found the money or the time or the will.

“Can I eat your—”

“Yes.”

I dump my yogurt carton in the trash and head back to the floor.

The desks are empty, some cluttered, some clean, a snapshot into the creative minds that work here.

Matthias’s desk is neat and orderly, just like him. He’s on a site visit today, and if I didn’t know he sat here, I wouldn’t have a clue he was here at all. No favorite coffee mug, no office jacket, no picture of his friends, his girlfriend. There’s no personality here at all.

Probably because he has noneI can imagine Will saying.

I’ve never paid much attention to Will’s dislike of him before. Mostly because Will claims to dislike everyone, but he seems especially scornful of Matthias.

Before I can stop myself I step into his cubicle. It only takes a second to pull out his plans for the Grayson Group, neatly filed away like everything else. My hands are steady as I flick through them, looking for the signs of his genius, the confirmation that when it comes down to me and him, he is the visionary victor and I’m stuck in the mud.

But it’s not there.

The only thing there are my plans. My ideas.

He’s scribbled some notes on them sure, a few minor adjustments, but they’re mine. No hint of the “different direction” they were supposed to be going in, no sign they’re deviating at all from my pitch.

It confirms what I think a part of me has known all along.

They’re my plans.

Matthias just took them over from me.

“Can I help you?”

I whirl to see Margot standing beside me, looking like a mother bear protecting her den.

“Just writing him a note,” I say, pretending to scrawl something on a Post-it. I don’t bother tidying them away. Let him wonder who was looking through his things. Let him know it was me.

“You could just email him,” Margot sniffs, jealousy making her suspicious. I almost laugh at the thought. She’s welcome to him.

“I’m old-fashioned like that,” I say and stroll past her even as a new kind of worry twists deep inside.

* * *

Between Will’s news and my Matthias discovery, I feel semi-queasy for the rest of the day and hope Claire will magically be in when I get home, but she’s out with Mark, of course. She’s always out with Mark now. Spending as much time as possible with him before he flies back to Seattle.

I’m not good alone. There’s a reason I seek out distraction, even when I know I shouldn’t.

I try my best. I remove my bra, heat up a frozen pizza and put on the latest gritty crime drama everyone’s talking about, but my mind keeps wandering and I lose track of which unshaven man with the haunted look on his face I’m meant to be focusing on.

I draft texts to Annie and Soraya but I don’t send them.

Declan is the only person I feel like talking to.

The realization surprises me and I toy with the idea of messaging him about what happened, even calling him. I know he’d pick up but it’s late and he’s probably busy and I…

I miss him.

Huh.

I stare at the television as ominous music plays and make an executive decision to do what I should have done days ago.

I google him.

As expected, there are a gazillion Declan Murphys, both here and in Ireland, but it narrows it down significantly when I add in the name of his village. I pour myself a glass of wine as I switch over to my barely working laptop, opening everything I can find into separate tabs.

It’s mainly the tour company, small articles and mentions in business magazines about the grants he’s secured. A dozen different websites run the same copy and I skim through them impatiently until I get to something new. There’s an article in a local Irish paper about Paul and Annie’s wedding, another about Declan and Harry at O’Shea’s. His social media is the same, bland professional posts linking to his blogs and articles, nothing to feed my desire to stalk.

And then I see her.

A woman stands beside a younger-looking Declan, outside Harry’s pub in the village. The blog post is more than a decade old but it’s the caption underneath the photograph that gets my attention.

Declan Murphy (right) pictured with wife, Fiona.

Wife.

I sink further into the cushions, the bottom of my laptop burning my stomach as the credits start to roll on the television.

Wife.

I search again with their names together and the results change immediately. There’s a wedding announcement, a picture of them at the local church. The same local blog, detailing the couple’s happy day.

Ten years ago.

They grin at each other in the photos, deliriously happy, dressed in their finest. They barely look like they’re out of their teens.

So he likes blondes.

Pretty blondes. Pretty tall blondes with great cheekbones and eyes like Audrey Hepburn’s.

I click through the other pictures, pausing when I spy another familiar face and I think back to the first night in Ireland and the quiet man who joined us at our table. Fiona’s father. It all makes sense now. How quickly Declan’s mood had changed that first evening. The man had offered to help Declan out. He’d spoken to him like a son. And Declan had been.

Married.

It doesn’t matter. People get married.

They also get divorced. It happens all the time. It happens every day and not like with my parents. Often it’s the best choice for everyone. The right choice.

There are no articles about that of course. No public notices or photos of them yelling at each other.

I mean, they obviously got a divorce. Declan would have said something. Paul would have said something. Especially when he knows my history.

They would have said something.

But they didn’t.

My skin grows cold as a new thought strikes me. Did she die?

Is Declan a widower?

Is there some tragic death at play here? Did he sit by her hospital bed as she fought for her life, run over by a car? No, a bus. A plane crash?

A murderer.

Is that why no one mentioned her? Is that why he was so awkward at the wedding? Because it reminded him so much of his dead wife?

I put my wine on the coffee table, not trusting myself not to spill it. It’s the right move. I’m halfway through a list of Irish death notices when my phone vibrates, terrifying me.

Annie’s name flashes up.

For one horrible second, I think about not answering but I push that thought from my mind as quickly as it came. If anyone’s been keeping secrets from me, it’s not her.

She doesn’t wait for me to answer when I accept the call. “Sandia’s closed down,” she says. “Everything is closing in this city. Where am I going to get my eyebrows done now?”

“How about a million other places?” Paul’s muffled voice calls from somewhere in the background.

“I don’t want somewhere else.”

“Then don’t get them done. No one’s going to notice.”

“I’ll notice,” she yells. I hear rustling as she moves to another room. A door closes. “Paul says hi. I forgot how small our apartment is here. We’re driving each other crazy.” She gasps. “You’ll never guess who I saw yesterday.”

I turn back to the death notices, still scrolling. “Who?”

“Tammy Wells! Do you remember her? She’s pregnant. With twins.”

“Crazy.”

“She looks great too. I think I hate her now.”

I rest my head against the cushion. “Hey, Annie?”

“Yes?”

I hesitate, clicking back to the blog. God. If it sounds this stupid in my head what’s it going to sound like when I say it out loud? “Nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

“Do you want to get lunch with me and Paul tomorrow? Paul’s mom is coming to stay for a few days, so we’re pretty packed entertaining her. I won’t have much time to see you. We can meet you near the office.”

I switch my phone to my other ear.

Wife.

“You still there?”

“Yes,” I say, zooming in on Fiona’s face. “Sorry. Lunch would be great.”

“Are you okay? You sound weird.”

“I’m just tired.”

“We don’t have—”

“I want to see you guys,” I interrupt.

“Well, great.” She sighs down the phone. “Hey, can we talk for a few more minutes? I want Paul to think I’m mad at him so he’ll make me dinner.”

I close the laptop lid, the image of Fiona burned into mind. “No problem,” I say. “I could use the distraction.”