“It’s him again, isn’t it?” she asks, nodding toward the buzzing phone.
“It’s always him,” I say. My voice sounds like it’s been stored in a dry basement for a decade—thin. Brittle. Honestly, can I go there? To the basement. I need a few decades to process the last few days.
“Give it to me,” she says, stepping into the room. “I’ll tell him exactly where he can stick his architectural sensibilities.”
“No,” I say, finally reaching out and flipping the phone face-down. The buzzing becomes a muffled thud. “It’s fine. Let him call. Let him drain his battery. He’s good at wasting things anyway.”
Wren studies me. She’s always been good at reading body language. “You need to eat something that isn’t made of adrenaline and spite, Margot. I’m making a Greek salad. Feta is the only thing that makes sense in a world where your husband is a complete bastard.”
I try to smile, but my face feels like wet plaster that’s already started to set. “And here I was hoping for pizza.”
“If you want it, you got it! Giant slices of pepperoni and cheese with a side of salad.”
I start to stand, the borrowed robe heavy around my calves, when the world changes.
Three heavy, thunderous knocks hit the front door.
The sound doesn’t just fill the apartment, it shatters it. It’s not a polite request for entry, but a demand. The sound of someone who has stopped caring about etiquette, or about neighbors calling the police.
Wren and I both freeze. The celery stalk in her hand drops to the floor with a soft thud.
The apartment suddenly loses its oxygen. I think of Ross, of the way he looked in the hallway of our house, and a cold, metallic taste fills my mouth.
It shouldn’t be him. But Ross Calder is an architect. He knows how to find things. He knows how to track the movements of the people who matter, even when he’s busy forgetting their names. My parents probably told him.
Wren recovers first. Ready for war. Her eyes turn to flint.
“Stay here,” she commands. “Do not come out or make a sound.”
She turns and marches to the entryway, her footsteps purposeful.
Not wanting to obey anyone but myself, I stop at the edge of the hall. Then I stop at the edge of the frame, peering into the living room.
Wren reaches the door. She doesn’t look through the peephole—because she knows. Grabbing the handle, she yanks it open, her body blocking the entire entrance like a human shield.
“You have a lot of nerve showing up here, Ross,” she says, voice of ice. Not the kind of ice that melts, but the kind that cracks the engine block of a car.
“Wren. Move.”
The voice that answers doesn’t sound like my husband. It’s too low, too ragged. It sounds like a man who’s been screaming into a pillow for forty-eight hours.
I edge another inch, squinting. From this angle, I can see him.
It’s a shock to the system. The Ross Calder I know is a creature of discipline and silver-grey suits. He is salt-and-pepper hair and a jawline that could cut glass. The man standing in Wren’s hallway is a man possessed with urgency.
He’s unshaven, a dark, uneven stubble covering his face. His skin is the color of old newspaper, grey and sallow, and his eyes are mapped with red veins, sunken into his skull. He’s wearing the same white dress shirt he had on when I left, but it’s a disaster: buttons missing, the collar stained with sweat and coffee, the fabric wrinkled in a way that suggests he’s been sleeping in it, or perhaps not sleeping at all. His tie is a loose, frayed cord hanging around his neck.
After setting his briefcase on the floor, he starts to step inside.
“You are not coming in here,” Wren says, her voice rising. She crosses her arms over her chest, her stance immovable. “I should have called the police the second I saw your car on the street. Turn around and walk away, Ross. Before I make this official.”
While he doesn’t flinch, he does look past her, his gaze searching for me with wide, glassy eyes.
“I’m not leaving,” he says. There’s no aggression in his tone, only a flat, terrifying determination. “I’m not leaving until I speak to her. I don’t care if you call the cops. I’ll wait for them on the porch. I’ll talk to her while they’re handcuffing me.”
“You think this is a romantic grand gesture? You whispered another woman’s name in the afterglow, Ross. This silence is what you earned. You don’t get a rebuttal.”
“I know what I did,” Ross gasps, and for a second, his knees seem to buckle. He catches himself on the doorframe, his fingers digging into the wood. His wedding ring, the one I watched him twist and turn, glints under the hallway light. A cruel joke. “I’m a wreck because of my actions and mistakes. But I’m not leaving.”
