Page 20 of The Wife He Accused

"I know. Text me anyway."

The door clicked shut behind her.

The apartment settled.

Melody stood at the window. The light outside had shifted into the late-afternoon gray that made everything look softer than it was. She could hear someone upstairs moving furniture, the scrape of wood against wood, a muffled thud. A life happening, ordinary and unremarkable.

When the buzzer sounded, sharp and mechanical against the quiet, her body reacted before her mind did. Her heart lifted, a small involuntary motion, like something reaching toward light.

She crossed the room and pressed the button.

"Yes?"

"Melody."

His voice. Even through the static, even flattened by the cheap speaker, it was unmistakable.

Controlled. Familiar.

She closed her eyes, for the smallest second.

"Come up," she said.

The lock buzzed.

She stepped back, smoothing her hands down the front of her sweater without thinking, as if preparing for something she could still influence. The apartment felt suddenly too small, the walls too close, the air too still.

The knock came less than a minute later.

She opened the door. Alexander stood in the hallway in the navy suit she had once told him she liked. He looked the way he always looked. Composed. Hair in place. Tie straight. The version of him that existed in boardrooms and photographs and every room that required a man who did not lose control.

For a moment neither of them spoke. Then he stepped inside.

"Thank you for seeing me," he said.

The door closed behind him.

She did not offer him a seat. He did not take one.

They stood facing each other in the middle of Angelica's living room, the couch between them like a line neither had agreed to cross.

"I'll be direct. I made an incorrect assessment yesterday evening." His voice was even, measured. "I acted on a partial report provided by Rivera. The information I had at the time was incomplete."

She felt something inside her still.

"Rivera brought me the full file. It confirms your account of the meeting. The donor, the consultant, the structure of the engagement. Every detail you tried to give me in thesuite is documented in the corrected report. There was no …misconduct."

Confirmed.Documented.Corrected report.

The words landed in her chest one at a time.

“I was wrong." He paused, just long enough to mark the end of a section. "I shouldn’t have made the accusation without verifying the full set of facts. That was a failure of judgment on my part, and I take full responsibility for it. I apologize."

Silence followed. Filled with the shape of everything he had not said.

Melody looked at him. At the man she loved.

She waited. For the crack. For the shift. For the moment when his voice would falter, when something uncontained would break through the structure and reach for her in the only way that would matter. The Capri voice. The bathroom-floor voice. TheI've got you, I've got you.