THE SEVENTH CHAIR
Our honeymoon was just three days at a small inn in Normandy, all our budget allowed.
Back in Paris, I tried not to think about the wedding anymore, tried not to check whether my family had reached out at all.
They hadn’t.
Not a single apology, not one question about how the wedding had gone.
On social media, Margaux posted dozens of photos from Théo’s naming party at Le Meurice — flowers flown in from Holland, a five-tier cake, my parents beaming as they held their grandson among hundreds of guests.
I didn’t comment, didn’t like a single post, just scrolled past quietly, though each photo felt like a small needle pressing into my chest.
Three weeks after the wedding, Monsieur Rousseau stopped by Marcus’s studio one afternoon, carrying an old leather briefcase.
“I have a few phone calls to make,” he told Marcus, his tone suddenly serious, unlike his usual composed manner. “I wanted to ask you first — do you trust me enough to introduce your work to a few old friends?”
Marcus looked at me, then at Monsieur Rousseau, his face a mix of hope and disbelief.
“Are you sure, Monsieur Rousseau? I don’t want to trouble you on my account.”
“I don’t do anything I don’t believe in, Marcus,” he said, opening the briefcase to reveal photographs he had quietly taken of several of Marcus’s paintings months earlier, during his visits to the studio. “I sent a few of these to an old friend, a collector I worked with for twenty years before I stepped away.”
“Who is it?” I asked, my heart pounding.
“Alexandre de Vaux.”
I didn’t recognize the name, but Marcus did — he shot to his feet, his face pale with shock.
“Alexandre de Vaux, the collector who owns the third-largest contemporary art collection in Europe?”
“That’s him,” Rousseau nodded. “He called me last night. He wants to see your work in person.”
That night, Marcus and I couldn’t sleep.
We sat on the studio floor amid unfinished canvases, talking through every possibility, every fear, every fragile hope we didn’t dare believe was real.
“What if he doesn’t like my work?” Marcus asked, anxious, his thumb absently rubbing at a dried smear of paint.
“Then you’re still the painter who walked into our wedding as the man who gave me his whole love,” I said, taking his hand. “No one can take that away.”
But in my heart, I couldn’t stop myself from hoping too.
Perhaps this was exactly what Monsieur Rousseau had seen since the day of our wedding — not just our loneliness, but a talent waiting for the right eyes to find it.
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