Chapter 490: Twelve Weeks

The car was already loaded by the time Arianne came downstairs, Gio standing at the base of the stairs with a tablet, the particular patience of a man who’d triple-checked every detail an hour ago and was now just waiting for the family to catch up to the schedule.

"Private terminal, no manifest filed under his name," Gio said, before she asked. "Kessler’s team is meeting him planeside. Nobody at either end gets a photo unless we sell it ourselves."

"We’re not selling it."

"Then nobody gets a photo." He didn’t look up from the tablet. "His publicist already has three interview requests queued for when he lands. I told them all the same thing. No press until the shoot wraps."

"He’ll thank you for that once he’s home."

"He’ll resent me for it this week and thank me when it wraps." Gio said it like a schedule item, not a joke, though it was both.

Franz came down a minute later, a bag over one shoulder, dressed like a man going somewhere ordinary instead of somewhere that would put his face on three trade sites before he’d cleared customs. Trade coverage had already started overnight, a preview piece calling the Kessler film "the kind of performance the Laurel committee doesn’t get to ignore twice," a phrase Arianne had read four times without deciding whether it made the morning easier or harder.

"You saw the piece," Franz said, reading her face before she’d said a word.

"I saw it."

"Doesn’t change today."

"No." She took the bag from his shoulder before he could argue about it, mostly so her hands would have something to do. "It doesn’t."

"Laurel talk before the film’s even finished shooting is a curse as often as it’s a compliment." Franz kept his voice easy, but he’d said the same thing three times in the past week, which meant it wasn’t as easy as he wanted it to sound.

"Then don’t read the next one."

"I won’t have a choice. Kessler reads every article about his own films out loud to the crew like it’s scripture."

"Then let Kessler carry the curse. You just have to act."

"I just have to act." Franz repeated it back to her like he was trying the sentence on, testing whether it fit better coming from someone else’s mouth than his own.

Gilbert arrived before the car could pull around, still in the suit from an early meeting he hadn’t bothered to change out of, a garment box under one arm that he handed to Franz without ceremony.

"Audrey’s idea," Gilbert said, by way of explanation. "A jacket that doesn’t look like it cost what it cost. She said you’d need one for whatever event Kessler drags you to once the film’s actually finished."

"Tell her I said thank you before I’ve even seen it."

"Tell her yourself. She’ll call tonight to make sure it fits." Gilbert clapped a hand on Franz’s shoulder, brief, the closest thing to sentiment he allowed himself in a front hall with an audience. "Twelve weeks. Come back the same as you left."

"That’s the plan."

"It’s always the plan," Gilbert said, without elaborating on what he meant by that. Arianne had spent enough years reading the rest of what Gilbert left unsaid.

The twins were waiting in the front hall, dressed for school but not moving toward the door, Leo with his backpack already on and Lily holding the drawing she’d made the night before, rolled up and tied with a ribbon she’d insisted on choosing herself.

"You have to take it with you," Lily said, holding it out before Franz had fully crossed the room. "Not in the suitcase. In your pocket, so it doesn’t get squished."

"It won’t fit in my pocket."

"Then a bag that’s not the suitcase."

Franz crouched to her height and took the drawing with both hands, the kind of care usually reserved for something breakable. "This one gets its own bag."

"Every day," Leo said, not a question, checking the terms of something they’d already negotiated between themselves. "You said every day."

"I video call every day I can get a signal." Franz put a hand on the back of Leo’s neck, the same gesture he’d use on a nephew twice his size in another few years. "Some days the signal’s bad. That’s not me forgetting."

"We know." Leo said it fast, like he needed to get it out before it could turn into something bigger than he wanted to hold on a school morning. "Uncle Franz has to go be the best actor again."

"I don’t have to be anything." Franz looked between both of them, serious in the way that made the twins stop fidgeting and listen. "I go do the job. Coming home is the part I don’t have to try at."

Lexx made his opinion known from Aunt Estella’s arms, a full-body lean toward Franz that nearly took her down with him, small fist already closing around the collar of Franz’s jacket the second he was within reach. Franz took him without complaint and let Lexx pull at the collar until it came half-untucked, patient in a way he wasn’t with anyone else’s hands on his clothes.

"He’s going to remember you left in a wrinkled shirt," Arianne said.

"He’s not going to remember any of this." Franz pressed his mouth to the top of Lexx’s head, brief, and handed him back before the moment could turn into the kind neither of them wanted to have in front of the twins. "That’s the whole reason I get to be the one who’s sorry about it instead of him."

The goodbyes at the door went quick, efficient because efficient was easier, Gio already at the car and Aunt Estella already herding the twins toward the other car for school with the particular briskness of a woman who understood exactly how long a lingering goodbye could stretch if allowed to. Franz kissed the top of each twin’s head, told Lexx something pitched too low for Arianne to catch, and left the front hall emptier than it had been a minute before.

Arianne walked him out to the car herself, past Gio, who found something urgent on his tablet the moment she fell into step beside Franz.

"Twelve weeks," she said, at the car door, because saying the number out loud made it smaller than it felt.

"Twelve weeks." Franz set his bag down and turned to face her fully, no schedule left to hide behind. "I keep waiting to feel ready to go, and I don’t think that feeling’s coming. I’m going anyway."

"That’s usually how it works."

"Is it how it worked for you? Walking back into Rochefort Group the first week."

"No." She let that sit, honest instead of comforting. "I did it anyway too."

Franz’s hand came up to her jaw, unhurried, like the car wasn’t idling six feet away with a schedule attached to it. "I’ll call the second I land. Doesn’t matter what time it is there."

"I’ll be up."

"You don’t have to be."

"I know." Arianne held his gaze a second longer than the goodbye required, something in her chest she left unsaid, plain enough on her face that he wouldn’t miss it.

Behind him, her phone buzzed once against her hip, a message from Nate that could wait, another from a board member that could wait longer, the whole ordinary machinery of the day already trying to pull her back into it before the car had even left the driveway. She ignored both.

"Go," she said, "before Kessler starts calling Gio directly."

Franz kissed her once, unhurried despite everything working against unhurried, and got into the car without looking back at the house — looking back would have made leaving harder than either of them could afford this morning, and neither of them needed to say so out loud.

The car pulled out of the drive and down the long stretch of road that led off the estate, and Arianne stood there after it had gone, past the point where standing there served any purpose, the morning ordinary around her in every way except the one that mattered. Gio’s car left next, taking the twins to school, and the house behind her went silent in the particular way a house only goes silent when it’s used to being full.

She went back inside before she could stand there a moment longer than she already had. The garment box from Gilbert still sat unopened on the hall table where Franz had left it in the rush to load the car, and she carried it upstairs to their room instead of leaving it for later, setting it on the end of the bed like putting it somewhere specific might make the twelve weeks pass faster than just leaving it wherever it landed.

Twelve weeks was nothing. She’d survived longer stretches than that without him, back when survival was the only thing between them. Twelve weeks had never once broken anything that had actually mattered before, and she told herself that twice on her way back down the stairs, before the house’s ordinary noise — a dishwasher running, the housekeeper’s radio down the hall — finally gave her something else to hold onto besides the number.