She loved him for that.
When he proposed, he did it in her apartment during a thunderstorm. Rain streaked the windows. Her sewing machine was still threaded with ivory cotton. He got down on one knee between a pile of pattern paper and a laundry basket.
“I don’t want a woman who fits into my life,” he said. “I want to build one with you.”
She said yes with thread still stuck to her sleeve.
Their wedding was in a garden that smelled of roses and damp earth. Simone made her own gown, off-white and structured, with clean shoulders and a skirt that moved like water. It celebrated her body rather than apologizing for it. When she walked down the aisle, Marcus cried openly. His mother dabbed her eyes. Tasha sobbed so loudly Simone almost laughed.
For years afterward, when things grew complicated, Simone used that memory as proof.
He loved me once, she would tell herself.
As if love, once given, could not be withdrawn in pieces.
The first year was good. They rented a townhouse with big windows and a tiny back patio where Simone kept herbs in chipped clay pots. Marcus worked long hours but came home hungry and happy. Simone studied, sketched, sewed, dreamed. On Sundays, they cooked together. On Fridays, they went to cheap restaurants and split dessert. He called her “my designer” with pride.
In the second year, Marcus began to rise.
A development deal in Midtown. A luxury retail project. Then a partnership with older men who wore watches worth more than Simone’s tuition. Suddenly, Marcus was invited into rooms where every surface gleamed and every woman seemed poured into a narrow definition of elegance. Rooftop lounges. Private dinners. Charity events. Hotel bars with marble bathrooms and menus without prices.
At first, his comments were gentle enough that Simone questioned herself for feeling wounded.
“Maybe something a little sleeker tonight, babe. These people are conservative.”
“You’d feel better if you did your hair differently.”
“I just want them to see you the way I see you.”
Then the concern sharpened.
“Are you really wearing that?”
“You know the wives are going to be dressed a certain way.”
“I’m not saying change who you are. I’m saying presentation matters.”
Presentation. Discipline. Refinement. Effort.
He never said the word fat in those early days. Marcus was too careful for that. He spoke in polished code. But Simone understood code. Women always do.
She began editing herself.
The bright dresses moved to the back of the closet. The fitted skirts stayed unworn. She bought black wrap dresses and beige heels that pinched. She learned to smile in rooms where women looked her over and decided whether she belonged. She learned to laugh when Marcus’s colleagues made jokes about “creative wives.” She learned to sit through dinners where men asked Marcus questions and women asked her where she got her hair done, never what she was building.
Her sketchbook came out less often.
Not all at once. Dreams rarely die dramatically. They go quiet first.
Marcus did not forbid her from designing. That would have been easier to hate. He simply made it feel small.
“You’re still working on that?”
“Do you think there’s really a market?”
“I just don’t want you disappointed.”
And because she loved him, because she wanted peace, because marriage teaches some women to mistake shrinking for compromise, Simone put the sketchbook away.
Then came the pregnancy.
For a while, it saved them.
Marcus was delighted. Truly delighted. He held the positive test like it was a contract signed by God. He came to appointments. He cried at the first ultrasound. He painted the nursery himself, pale blue-gray, refusing to hire someone because, he said, “My son should know his father prepared a place for him.” At night, he placed his hand on Simone’s belly and spoke to the baby in a low, foolish voice that made her laugh.
“Hey, little man. It’s your dad. Your mother is stubborn. You’ll learn.”
Simone would lie there, one hand over his, and think maybe the good man had not disappeared. Maybe he had only been buried under ambition.
Eli was born during a violent spring storm. The hospital windows rattled. Rain slapped the glass. Simone labored for twenty-seven hours. Marcus stayed beside her for most of it, pale and frightened but present. When Eli finally arrived, red-faced and furious, Marcus broke down. He kissed Simone’s forehead and whispered, “You did it. My God, Simone, you did it.”
She had.
Her body had.
Six weeks later, he looked at that same body and said she had let herself go.
After that, the silence between them became a third adult in the house.
Marcus stopped reaching for her. Stopped sitting close on the sofa. Stopped asking how she felt. When relatives came over, he performed fatherhood beautifully, holding Eli in clean shirts, smiling for photos, kissing Simone’s temple like tenderness was still part of their language. But when the door closed behind guests, he handed the baby back and disappeared into emails.
Simone moved through those months like a woman underwater.
She fed Eli. Changed Eli. Rocked Eli. Walked the hallway at 3 a.m. with Eli pressed to her chest, whispering songs her mother used to hum. Her body changed again and again, swelling, softening, healing, aching. Sometimes she stood in the bathroom mirror and tried to find the woman from the yellow dress.
Some mornings, she could not.
By Eli’s fourth month, she knew about Priya.
Priya Soman worked with Marcus on the Henderson Tower project. She was a development consultant, sharp and beautiful, with glossy black hair and a calm, expensive way of moving through rooms. Simone had met her at a company dinner while still pregnant. Priya had shaken her hand and said, “You’re glowing,” in the tone women use when they mean enormous.
Marcus laughed differently around her. Not louder. Easier.
Simone noticed. Filed it away. Survived the evening.
After Eli was born, Marcus’s phone began lighting up at odd hours. He angled the screen away. He took calls outside. He said things like “site issue” and “investor problem” and “you wouldn’t understand.” Once, at 1:12 a.m., Simone walked into the kitchen for water and heard him on the patio.