Eleanor POV
One week of being married to someone who won't look at you teaches you how to disappear.
Eleanor wakes after James leaves. She moves through the penthouse like she's made of air. She eats meals alone. She reads books she doesn't understand. She waits for evening to become night so she can sleep and start the whole cycle again.
When James comes home, Eleanor becomes smaller. She learned this skill years ago. Working in rich people's houses taught her how to exist in a space without taking up room. How to move without making noise. How to be present but invisible.
But James corrects her anyway.
The way she holds her fork is wrong. Too tight. Too desperate. He shows her how a wife should hold it. Delicate. Confident. Like the fork is an extension of her hand and not a weapon she's learning to use.
The way she walks is wrong. She moves like she's apologizing for her own body. He comments on this during dinner when she brings him water. She's too hunched. Too careful. She looks like she's afraid of the floor.
The way she speaks is wrong. When Patricia asks her a question, Eleanor answers quietly. James overhears and corrects her later. She mumbles. She lacks conviction. She sounds like someone who doesn't believe in her own words.
Everything about Eleanor is wrong.
So Eleanor stops trying to be anything at all.
She becomes a ghost. She moves through rooms and doesn't leave an impression. She eats and doesn't taste. She exists in the penthouse and doesn't really live there. She's a woman made of absence.
This works for seven days.
On the eighth day, something breaks.
Eleanor is in the kitchen at eleven at night. James is out. He's been out every night this week. Patricia has gone to bed. The penthouse is silent in the way that only expensive buildings can be silent. Silent and hollow and endless.
Eleanor is standing at the sink washing dishes even though there's a dishwasher because washing dishes keeps her hands busy and busy hands don't shake and shaking hands make her feel things.
But her hands start shaking anyway.
She thinks about Catherine. Catherine is dead and Eleanor never got to say goodbye properly because finding out you were switched at birth doesn't leave room for goodbyes. Catherine is dead and Eleanor abandoned her apartment and Catherine's things are still sitting in that small space like they're waiting for Eleanor to come back.
Eleanor thinks about her old job at the diner. She thinks about the way the uniform felt comfortable because it was a uniform. She thinks about minimum wage and double shifts and a life so small that nothing could hurt her because she didn't have anything worth hurting over.
She thinks about James looking at her like she's a problem he has to solve.
Eleanor's hands slip and a plate crashes into the sink and breaks.
The sound of breaking glass is too much.
Eleanor sits on the kitchen floor and breaks with it.
The tears come silently at first. Then harder. Then like her whole body is trying to reject everything that's happened. She's sitting on the floor of a penthouse that costs more than she made in her entire life and she's crying because being rich is terrifying. Being married is terrifying. Being alive is terrifying.
She's crying because she's trapped between two lives and neither one fits anymore.
The sound of the elevator stops her crying.
Eleanor looks up and realizes it's too late. She's on the kitchen floor. Her face is wet. Her dress is dirty. She looks exactly like what she is. A girl who doesn't belong anywhere.
Footsteps move through the penthouse.
James appears in the kitchen doorway and stops moving.
Eleanor watches him process what he's seeing. His wife. On the kitchen floor. Crying like the world is ending. And maybe for Eleanor, it is.
James doesn't say anything. He doesn't ask what she's doing or why she's making a mess. He just sits across from her on the kitchen floor like sitting on the floor of a penthouse is a normal thing to do.
"What's wrong," he says. It's not a question the way most people ask it. It's a statement that needs an answer.
Eleanor tries to speak but her voice breaks into pieces.
"I can't," she starts and stops. "I can't do this. I can't be what you want. I can't learn to walk right or talk right or hold a fork like I was born to it. I'm not her. I'm not the Eleanor you wanted. I'm not going to become her no matter how many times you correct me."
James doesn't respond.
Eleanor keeps talking because sometimes words are the only thing that keeps you from drowning completely.
"At the charity dinner last week, that woman called me charming," Eleanor says. "Not in a nice way. In the way you call someone charming when you think they're simple. When you think they're a puppy that learned a new trick. And I realized in that moment that I will never fit in your world. I will always be the girl who cleans houses. I will always be the one people pity. I will never be good enough for any of this."
She looks at James and her voice gets smaller.
"And I know you hate me. I know you didn't want this. I know the girl you wanted is dead and I'm the reminder that she's really gone. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry I'm not her."
James stares at her like he's seeing her for the first time.
Then he speaks and his voice is different. Softer. Less like ice and more like something that could melt.
"You are not out of place," he says. "You are trying to become someone you are not and that's why nothing fits. Stop trying to be what I want. Stop trying to be what you think a wife should be. Stop trying to be her."
Eleanor doesn't understand.
"Be Eleanor," James continues. "Just Eleanor. The real one. Not the version you think will survive in my world. Not the version that learns which fork to use. Just be the girl who's sitting on my kitchen floor telling me the truth."
Eleanor's breath catches.
This is the first kind thing he's said to her since they married. This is the first moment he's treated her like she's a person instead of a problem. This is the first time he's told her that being herself is enough.
Eleanor looks at James sitting across from her on the kitchen floor of a penthouse neither of them really belongs in.
And she realizes something that terrifies her.
James Ashford is not as cold as she thought.
There's something underneath the ice. Something that breaks for a girl crying on the kitchen floor. Something that sees her as more than a fraud or a substitute for a dead woman.
Eleanor realizes in that moment that surviving this marriage isn't going to be the hardest thing anymore.
The hardest thing is going to be not falling in love with a man who still has photographs of another woman covering his office wall.