It wasn't what he said that bothered me; it was the glance. As though she were the person who needed to approve the answer. I noticed it, then dismissed it because I'd been annoyed by too many financial conversations already. That was the first time I remember seeing him, although Tessa later claimed they'd met at an industry event before she introduced us.
Afterward, Adrian sent a preliminary valuation. It listed possible private-sale ranges for each component and outlined how the collection might be marketed as a unified set. I thanked him and said I wasn't authorizing a sale. He responded politely, and the matter seemed finished. Tessa, however, kept discussing his numbers at home.
"You realize we could finally get out from under the workshop loan," she said one evening. "You could buy a larger building. We could travel whenever we wanted."
"The workshop loan is manageable."
"That's not the point."
"Then what is?"
"You're sitting on an asset most people would spend their whole lives trying to find, and you're acting like being offered money is an insult."
I told her it wasn't about the money. She said that was easy for someone with stable clients and a paid-off house to say. I could hear resentment beneath the words, but I treated it as ordinary frustration. She'd had a hard professional year, and I didn't want my good fortune to feel like an accusation.
The anniversary trip was her idea. She announced it over dinner in early spring with brochures she'd printed and a detailed schedule saved to her phone. Chicago, she said, would give us architecture, museums, good restaurants, and time away from work. We had talked about traveling for months without actually doing it, and her sudden enthusiasm made me hopeful. Maybe distance from the workshop would help us find the rhythm we'd been missing.
I suggested leaving on Friday morning. She said Thursday was better. I suggested a hotel closer to the train station. She wanted one overlooking the river, even though it cost more. When I mentioned an obligation at the workshop on Saturday, she told me Malik could handle it and reminded me how often I'd promised that we needed time for ourselves.
She wasn't wrong about that. I had spent too many evenings coming home with wood dust on my sleeves and my thoughts still in the shop. I owed her attention. I also owed myself a weekend without invoices and restoration deadlines. I agreed to her dates, arranged for Malik to cover the shop, and let her handle the hotel reservation.
Two days before departure, she asked whether I'd bring the workshop laptop so we could review some photographs for a possible future exhibition while traveling. I told her we were supposed to be taking a break. She laughed, kissed my cheek, and said I was impossible. Then she added that I should bring my personal laptop because it would be easier to watch movies in the hotel.
I brought it. I also packed my keys and a small flash drive containing copies of workshop inventory records, because I was in the habit of keeping my work close even while pretending to leave it behind. At the time, I didn't think either choice mattered. I didn't know that at nearly midnight, sitting alone in a Chicago hotel, I would be grateful that I'd once been too cautious to trust every file to someone else's computer.
We left Pittsburgh on Thursday afternoon. Tessa drove the first stretch while I answered a few final client messages. She chose music I usually liked, asked whether I was excited, and insisted we stop for coffee at a place she'd found online. She seemed almost unusually affectionate. When I reached for her hand across the console, she squeezed it twice.