The investor went pale and apologized twice. On the drive home, Elias looked out the window and said, "You didn't have to do that." Viven kept her eyes on the road ahead. I know, she said. And for the first time, she understood exactly how he had felt with the clock.
Spring turned to summer. Summer to fall. Little by little, without either of them deciding it, the hallway between the east wing and the west grew shorter. She started coming home before 9. Then before 8, he started leaving a plate warm in the oven for her.
She started eating it with him. One night she told him about her father teaching her to sail on the lake when she was seven and how he had called her his little admiral. Another night Elias told her about Nathan, about the first time he had taken his son fishing and they had caught nothing but a boot. She laughed so hard she had to put down her fork. In early December, almost a year after the night she knocked on his door.
Elias came through the front door carrying a small fur tree on his shoulder, snow on his collar. Viven looked up from her laptop in the great room. What is that? A Christmas tree. We don't do Christmas in this house.
He set it down near the fireplace. I noticed. I mean it. Elias. I've worked through every Christmas since I was 22.
I don't like Christmas. That's all right, he said, and began untangling a box of lights. She watched him for a while. You're still decorating it. I'm not decorating it for Christmas.
She frowned. Then who are you decorating it for? Elias stopped. He looked across the room at her, a strand of white lights hanging loose in his hands. For the woman standing in front of me, he said.
Viven did not answer. She closed her laptop. Then slowly, as if she were walking onto unfamiliar ground, she came over, picked up a glass ornament from the box, and hung it on the highest branch she could reach. That night, Elias came downstairs for a glass of water, and found her asleep on the sofa beside the tree, the lights still glowing, a stack of reports sliding off her lap. He gathered the papers, set them on the table, and gently pulled a wool blanket over her shoulders.
Her eyes opened. Elias," she murmured. "Yes," she hesitated, half in a dream. "When the contract ends, will you really leave?" The tree lights blinked softly.
The clock on the mantle ticked. Elias stood there for a long time, and he did not answer. The story broke on a Monday morning, 9 days before Christmas. It started with a single anonymous tip to a financial newspaper sent from a source no one could trace and by noon it was on every business channel in the country. Blackwood Aerys married handyman to keep her throne.