Ten Minutes to Grieve

My boyfriend, Julian Vance, always said that people in relationships shouldn't use their partners as emotional dumping grounds. So he set a rule. I got ten minutes a day to unload on him. He said his job wore him out and he hoped I'd understand. I agreed. I even thought he simply had strong boundaries. Then my grandmother died, the woman who had raised me on her own. I came back from the funeral home still gripping the reading glasses she never got to put on. All I wanted was for Julian to hold me for a while. He sighed instead. "It isn't that I won't stay with you. It's that you've used up your quota for today." I asked through tears, "Can't today be an exception?" He said, "Once there's a first exception, there's a second. I have a meeting in the morning, and you need to learn to process things on your own." But at two that morning, the woman he had never gotten over called him in tears, saying her boyfriend had dumped her. Julian threw on a coat and talked her through it on the balcony until dawn. I watched him through the glass for a long time. So the ten minutes weren't his boundary. They were only the ceiling he had set for me. In that case, I would stop taking up his time. I turned around, packed away my grandmother's things, and left my key on the table. Whoever he gave his time to from then on had nothing to do with me. Chapter 1 It was just getting light when Julian came in from the balcony. He showed no sign of having stayed up all night, as if he hadn't been the one who had spent the entire night talking to Zoe Whitmore. I sat at the dining table, slowly slipping my grandmother's papers into a document envelope. A few changes of clothes lay beside them. Julian glanced at it. He didn't ask when I had packed. He only took a black card out of his inside jacket pocket. "Use this to cover your grandmother's funeral expenses. The limit is more than enough." The card slid across to me. My fingers stopped. I looked up at him. "Who were you talking to until dawn last night?" Something in his face went stiff for a second. It took him a moment to pull out a chair and sit down. His voice was flat. "Just some work problems. Get the funeral arrangements done first, and don't worry about anything else." The housekeeper brought over a bowl of oatmeal just then, with no raisins and at just the right temperature. Julian took the bowl and set it by my hand. "You have a sensitive stomach. You'll feel sick if you go too long without eating. Eat something first." I looked at the oatmeal and my throat tightened. He remembered that I hated raisins. He remembered my stomach ulcer. He remembered that my hands and feet went cold after a late night. What he couldn't remember was that holding me when I needed him most wouldn't have made him miss his morning meeting. "You're still pitching the sustainable park project next week." He checked his watch. "Take these three days to get yourself back on track." I raised my head slowly and looked at him. "And if I can't?" "Then let your assistant present for you." He paused. "I've arranged a car to take you back. Be safe on the road." I had meant to ask whether he could come with me, even if only until the funeral was over. To my grandmother, he was family. He should have been there. But he was already on his feet, taking a call from his assistant. "Zoe won't take a client's call? Where is she now? I'm on my way." He picked up his car keys and looked back at me as he turned. "Keep the card. And stop being difficult." "What happened to her?" I asked evenly. He was busy putting on his shoes and answered without looking up, "A breakup. She isn't stable right now." "So you're canceling a board meeting for her?" Julian stopped where he stood. He turned back to me, his brows drawing together. "Iris, she isn't like you." For a second, the sound of my name in his mouth fooled me. Years ago, when I had just started graduate school and my grandmother was in the hospital, he had held my hand in the corridor and told me that no matter what happened, I would never have to face it alone. Back then, he'd said, "Iris, being strong isn't about carrying everything by yourself. It's about knowing you have someone to turn to when you're tired." Now he had rewritten that sentence into something else. As if looking steady enough had cost me the right to be taken care of. "How is she different?" "She isn't as steady as you." He said it as though it were obvious. "You know how to handle your own feelings." Then he left. In the end I didn't take the card. I pushed it away along with the oatmeal, opened my laptop, and logged in to the onboarding page the institute had sent me. Six months earlier, my old advisor had asked whether I wanted to apply again for a position on one of the institute's projects. I had never given him an answer. Three days ago the formal offer had landed in my inbox, asking me to confirm by today whether I would accept. I had given that job up to help Julian keep his landscape firm alive. Now the institute was willing to hold the spot open and wanted to know whether I would take it. I stared at the confirm button for a long time, then pressed it. A line came up on the screen. Start date: three days from now. I closed the laptop, put the card in an envelope, wrote Return on it, and went back to sorting my grandmother's papers. This time I wasn't going to wait for Julian to come home. Chapter 2 The funeral was set for two days later. It rained all night in my hometown. Julian came after all. He wore a sharply cut black suit and held a long-handled umbrella over me, blocking the slanting rain at the cemetery gate. His other hand rested steadily beneath the urn in my arms. My relatives saw him and told me how lucky I was that he had set his work aside and rushed over at a time like this. I looked down at the urn and didn't explain. Julian had canceled his meetings, and he did stand beside me from start to finish. He had even called the cemetery ahead of time and chosen a quiet plot on a slope for my grandmother, away from the relatives already circling her estate. While the rain came down, one of them tried to steer the conversation toward who would get the little house she had lived in. He handed over the paperwork and shut them up in a few sentences. In front of other people he was always dependable. After the rites I got into the car, cold and damp all over, my fingers still curved the way they had been around the urn. The door shut. Julian turned the heat up and spread a blanket over my legs. All that careful attention made me lean into his shoulder without thinking, and the tears came before I noticed them. He didn't push me away. He only lifted his wrist and checked the time. "Iris, that's ten minutes." My body slowly went rigid against his shoulder. "We buried my grandmother today." "I know." He handed me a tissue. "But you can't stay stuck inside it." His phone rang. He glanced at the screen and his expression changed. I looked down at it. Zoe had sent a photo of herself standing next to a railing somewhere high up, the night blurred behind her. Julian sat up straight, his face grim. "Stop the car." The driver looked at him in the mirror. "Mr. Vance, there's still a stretch of mountain road ahead." "I said stop the car." Julian frowned, plainly out of patience already. I looked up at him. "Where is she?" "She's in a bad place. I have to go." He gripped the phone. "Head back to the house. I'll come get you tomorrow." I watched him get out. The black umbrella disappeared into the rain, and the driver asked hesitantly whether he should take me back. I said, "No. Take me to the county seat." Not long after the car pulled out, I called the lawyer. He was the firm's longtime counsel, brought in by Julian. I had negotiated the original partnership agreement for him myself, and I had signed the shares in my name over to the company. "If Julian and I separate, can I get those shares back?" There was a pause on the line. "The transfer was completed at the time. Unless he returns them voluntarily, the contract is what governs." "Then draft a waiver of my claim." "Ms. Calloway, are you sure?" "I'm sure." As I stepped outside, the institute sent through my flight details, reminding me to meet the group at the airport at ten the next morning. Julian's message came in right behind it. He said he would make up for leaving so suddenly. Tomorrow, he would go with me to pick out a new car. I looked at it for a long time, then replied, "No need." He called almost at once, an edge of impatience in his voice. "The car is for you. What are you making a scene about now?" "I don't want your car." "Then what do you want?" I looked at my reflection in the law office's glass door. My face was pale, my eyes were swollen, and I was clutching the waiver. "What I want, you can't afford to give." The line went quiet for a few seconds. He seemed not to understand, and in the end he only said, "We'll talk when you're back." I hung up and handed the documents to the lawyer. When I got back to where I was staying, another message came from Julian. "Don't take this out on yourself. I'll be with you tomorrow." I deleted the thread and didn't answer. Chapter 3 When I got home, Julian was already back. He saw me come in and took my bag from me. "What's in the box is for you." Only then did I notice the long wooden box sitting in the entryway. Inside was an out-of-print botanical guide with yellowed pages and my name custom-embossed on the cover. It was the book I had wanted all through graduate school. We had found it in a used bookstore once. I spent a long time leafing through it, but put it back because it was too expensive. Julian said that once the company was steady, he would track a copy down for me. My hand shook as I ran it over the cover. "You found it?" "I had someone ship it from overseas." He pushed the book toward me. "Keep it if you like it." I didn't take it. I looked up at him. "Why can Zoe reach you whenever she wants?" He undid his cuff links and met my gaze. "Her father, Graham Whitmore, helped the company back then, and she's struggled with her mental health for years. I can't just turn my back on her." "You said she wasn't in a good state, so you gave her the whole night. The day my grandmother was buried, I got ten minutes." "Iris, you're not like her." "How am I not? Julian, I want to hear you say it. Tell me what she is to you." Julian looked at me for a moment, then reached over and tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear. "She's my responsibility. You're the only person I've ever seriously planned a future with, so there's no reason to compare yourself to her. She needs someone to look out for her. You don't." I gripped the page, and the edge of the paper left a thin red line on my fingertip. "And if I said I need it too?" "That's not who you are." He said it with certainty. "You're more mature than she is, and more level-headed." "Do you love me for being level-headed, or for never being any trouble?" Julian's jaw tightened. "Iris, stop turning every problem into a test of our relationship." "Then tell me what counts as a problem." He didn't answer. He set a key card on the table. "Zoe hasn't been doing well, so I put her in the guest apartment downstairs. She spirals when she's alone. When you're home you could sit and talk with her." I looked at the card and didn't move for a long moment. "You've already decided?" "It's temporary, and I'm the one who bought this place." He stopped, seeming to realize how harsh that sounded, and his voice softened again. "You're both women. Some things are easier to say to each other." I closed the wooden box and pushed it back to him. "I don't want the book." His eyebrows went up. "Haven't you always wanted it?" I turned my head away from him. "I did before. Not now." He looked at the book. His voice stayed flat. "You'd turn down even this because of Zoe?" I said, "This isn't about the book." His voice rose. "Then what exactly do you want me to do?" I opened my mouth to answer, but the sudden ring of a phone cut me off. Julian picked it up. Zoe's name was on the screen. He glanced at me and walked out to the balcony to answer. Before the glass door closed I heard him say quietly, "Don't be scared. I'm here." I looked at his back and went to the bedroom. That night, I logged in to the company system, transferred all my project access permissions to my assistant, and moved my savings out of the joint account and into my personal account. By the time Julian came in, I had a small suitcase packed. He looked it over. "Why did you pack so much?" I said softly, "I want to get away for a bit." He blinked, then laughed and pulled me in. "A trip sounds good. Tell me when you're heading back and I'll come get you." I didn't answer. I slipped a document into the bid materials he was taking to the summit the next day. It was a single page. Notice of Separation and Property Settlement. Chapter 4 At eight the next morning Julian was dressed and straightening his tie in front of the mirror. That was when Zoe knocked. She was in thin loungewear, her eyes red. She looked at me first from the doorway, then back at Julian. Julian went over, took the bag out of her hands, sat her down on the couch, and told the housekeeper to bring her a cup of hot tea. "You came out dressed like that?" He frowned, picked up a coat, and draped it around her shoulders. I stood in the entryway with the small suitcase in hand. Zoe saw it and hesitated. "Where are you going, Iris? Back home?" Julian answered for me. "She's going away to clear her head. She's been low lately, and a few days somewhere else will help." He said it lightly. I watched him draw the collar of the coat closed at Zoe's throat, the same care he had used on countless nights tucking the blanket in around me. Julian picked up his car keys. "I'll be back after the meeting. The card is yours. Buy whatever you want." I looked at the card and stepped aside. "I don't need it." His hand stopped in midair. "Don't start." I didn't explain again. I pulled the suitcase out the door. As the elevator doors slid shut, I heard Zoe ask softly, "Is Iris angry with you?" Julian answered right away. "She's always been independent. She'll be fine in a couple of days." The elevator descended, cutting off their voices. I took the suitcase to the airport. I didn't look back, and I didn't wait for him to notice I was gone. At ten exactly, the car the institute had sent picked me up outside the terminal. Meanwhile, Julian stood on the summit stage and opened the file in which he was going to announce my name. He turned the first page, then the second. A second later, he froze. The Notice of Separation and Property Settlement tucked inside it was projected up in perfect focus. A brief stir went through the hall. Julian looked down at the page, and the color drained out of his face. At the bottom of the page there was one line. Julian, my ten minutes are up. So are we.