Chapter 4: Welcome Home

They had married on Saturday at 11 a.m. with Robert as a witness and a courthouse clerk who had processed their paperwork with the kind of efficiency that suggested she had seen hundreds of marriages that looked exactly like this. Cole had worn a gray suit. Isla had worn a black dress. They had signed documents and shaken hands and then he had driven her to the airport to catch the 4:17 p.m. flight to LaGuardia.

The apartment itself was the thing that undid her.

Not because it was beautiful, though it was. Mercer's wife at least had the luxury of that. The penthouse overlooked Manhattan from the 42nd floor with the kind of view that made Isla's chest feel tight. The living room had floor-to-ceiling windows and exposed brick and the sort of minimalist furniture that only rich people could afford to have because they never actually had to sit on it and worry about the cost.

But it was not the apartment that undid her. It was the note on the kitchen counter, written in Cole's precise handwriting on a cream-colored card stock that probably cost more than Isla's weekly grocery budget.

"Welcome home. Quirks of the apartment: (1) Hot water tap in the master bathroom runs slow - suggest running it for 30 seconds before shower. (2) Second elevator is faster than the first. (3) Building management is on extension 0 if anything breaks. (4) Spare key in kitchen drawer, back left, under the tea towels. (5) I left space in the closet, fourth rod from the door. Coffee is in the freezer. Cream in the refrigerator, left side. - Cole"

Isla read this three times. She read it standing in the kitchen of an apartment that was not hers and would never be hers and was somehow a more intimate space than the conference room where she had married him. He had written about hot water. He had written about which elevator was faster. He had written about where the spare key was and where she could put her things.

He had gotten her coffee. Not made it - he had gotten it. From somewhere that knew how to make coffee the way she liked it, which meant he had asked someone or researched it or done something that involved knowing more about her than they had actually discussed.

She was terrified of this. More terrified than she had been when signing the contract or boarding the plane or standing at City Hall and promising to take this man's name.

The fear was not that he was cold. The fear was that he was kind in the way that precise, organized people could be kind. By leaving detailed notes. By making sure the spare key was in the back left. By getting her coffee exactly right.

She put the note down on the marble countertop. She picked it up again. She folded it carefully and put it in her purse like it was evidence of something.

The guest bedroom (except it wasn't a guest bedroom anymore, was it? It was her bedroom) was immaculate. There was a closet with four rods, and the fourth rod from the door had room. There was a bed with high-thread-count sheets that felt like sleeping on money. There was a window that overlooked the city and made Isla feel like she was suspended above her own life.

She unpacked methodically. Her clothes, which looked suddenly very San Francisco in this Manhattan closet. Her laptop. Her work shoes. Her books. The artifacts of a life that had been lived in a SoMa loft and was now being transported to a penthouse and expected to make sense in two separate places at the same time.

She had been texting with Cole's assistant, Elizabeth, for the last three days. Elizabeth was unfailingly professional and also had opinions about everything. She had recommended a dry cleaner. She had suggested restaurants for when Isla needed to eat alone in the apartment. She had sent instructions for the building's gym. She had done all of this with the tone of someone who was solving a puzzle and enjoying the puzzle-solving.

Elizabeth had also, Isla learned on her second day, written the note about the hot water tap. She was texting Isla from a number that was not Cole's to clarify:

"The hot water actually needs 45 seconds if it's winter. Cole wrote 30 because he takes showers at 6:15 a.m. and is basically a robot. Give it 45. Also the coffee is a standing order from the place on the corner. Cole goes twice a week. I added you to the account."

"I didn't ask him how I take my coffee," Isla had texted back.

"He read an interview where you mentioned liking oat milk lattes with an extra shot," Elizabeth had replied. "He has a spreadsheet of facts about you. He's very normal about this."

The spreadsheet of facts about her was somehow both the most helpful and most unsettling thing Isla had heard all week. She tried not to think about it. She tried to focus on the work, instead. Quinn & Earth needed her. The Landmark investment was closing, and Isla had operations to manage and suppliers to coordinate and a business that was finally, finally growing the way she had imagined.

She had not been in the apartment for thirty hours before Cole came home.

She was in the kitchen, staring at the coffee situation like it was a problem she hadn't solved yet, when she heard the key in the lock. She froze with the coffee canister in her hand like she had been caught doing something wrong. The apartment was his. She was the intruder here. This was the arrangement.

Cole appeared from the living room still in his suit jacket, carrying a leather briefcase and that same expression of professional calm that he wore like other people wore cologne. He looked at her, looked at the coffee canister, and then looked back at her.

"I was making coffee," Isla said.

"I see that," Cole said. He put his briefcase down with the kind of care that suggested everything he owned was fragile. "Did you like your bedroom?"

"Yes," Isla said. "The note was very thorough."

"Elizabeth wrote the note," Cole said. He was removing his suit jacket in the way wealthy people did - carefully, like it was a procedure. "But I wrote the hot water tap part. I thought you might want to know about that first."

"I don't take forty-five minute showers," Isla said.

"No," Cole said. "Elizabeth said you're efficient about things. I thought you would appreciate advance notice."

He had gone to the refrigerator like he lived there, which of course he did. He poured a glass of water - just water, nothing else - and drank it standing up in the kitchen wearing his dress pants and perfectly pressed shirt and a tie that had cost more than Isla's rent used to be.

"Elizabeth mentioned that she arranged coffee," Isla said.

"Is it satisfactory?" Cole asked.

"Yes," Isla said. "But I feel like you shouldn't have to know how I take my coffee within the first week of being married to me."

Cole was quiet for a moment. He set the water glass down in the sink with the same precision he applied to everything. "I read that you take oat milk lattes with an extra shot in an interview you gave to Fast Company," he said. "You were talking about your first company and you mentioned that you wrote the business plan at this specific coffee shop because they understood your order. I thought it was a detail worth remembering."

Isla realized she had stopped breathing.

"That interview was from two years ago," she said.

"I know," Cole said. "I read all of your public interviews before you married me. I thought it was the responsible thing to do."

"You researched me," Isla said.

"Yes," Cole said. He said this the way someone else might say "I called to check if you arrived safely" - like it was a normal thing to do. "I married you. I thought I should know who you were."