Her voice halts my breath. Not angry. Calm, detached, a sound worse than screaming.
“Margot,” I say, gripping the edge of the counter, knuckles white. “It’s me.”
Ugh. I’m an idiot. Caller I.D. Of course she knows it’s me. I can hear her breathing.
“Ross,” she says finally. “I... I can’t do this right now.”
“I know,” I say quickly, desperate to keep the connection alive. “I’m not asking for anything. I just... I needed to hear your voice. I’m working on things. On myself.”
“I need time,” she says. The words land heavy, immovable. “I need to figure out who I am when I’m not managing your life.”
The truth strikes like a physical blow.
“Okay,” I whisper. “I’m here. Whenever you’re ready.”
“Goodbye, Ross.”
The line clicks dead.
I lower the phone. The kitchen smells of sawdust and the wine slowly leaking from the trash can. She answered. It wasn’t a yes, and it wasn’t a welcome. But she answered.
Sliding the phone into my pocket, I let a sense of peace rush in. It feels different now, less like a cage and more like a waiting room.
Chapter 15
Margot
“Ineed more sweaters.”
That was the excuse I gave Wren. A lie, of course. The truth was simpler—and more selfish: living in a space I hadn’t curated had become exhausting. I missed my lighting. I missed my silence.
Standing on the front step of my marital home, the key turns in the lock with a familiar, heavy click. Oh, how I missed it.
I push the door open. Inside, the air is thick. It preserves the ghost of the dinner I scrapped days ago, the faint, oily memory of lamb. But beneath the stale scent of missed connections, the place smells like me. Citrus and old paper.
I step in and close the door.
As I walk through the living room, I trail my palms along the worn spine of the emerald velvet sofa. I bought it at a flea market the summer before I met Ross. It cost fifty dollars and took two friends to haul it up the stairs of my old walk-up, but I loved it. It was mine before we were us.
Memories are everywhere.
Moving down the hall, my fingers brush the wallpaper. Ross hated it. He called it “busy” and “dated.” But I picked it because the pattern, faded peonies and twisting vines, reminded me of my grandmother’s sewing room. It was a hug in paper form.
When I reach the bedroom doorframe, I stop to trace the small, crescent-shaped gouge in the plaster.
The night it happened, Ross got a massive raise. He came home flushed with champagne, popping a celebratory bottle in the hallway. The cork flew wild, slamming into the wall with a crack like a gunshot. We laughed until we couldn’t breathe. I didn’t know then that the dent would last longer than the happiness.
Sighing, I enter the bedroom to pull a stack of cashmere sweaters from the cedar drawers. They land in my arms, soft and heavy. Packing them should be the next step. Now that I have them, I should turn around, walk out, and go back to Wren’s.
But the window facing Elias’s yard pulls me in.
I hesitate. Ross is there. I shouldn’t look. Shouldn’t care. But how could I not?
Shifting the pile of clothes to one arm, I tilt the blinds just enough to create a slice of view. Hiding isn’t necessary. He can’t see me in the dark.
Ross is on Elias’s back porch. Gone is the charcoal suit, the starched cuffs, the silk tie. In their place is a gray t-shirt, dark with sweat between the shoulder blades. He kneels, warring with a power drill.
I stare. The man who sketched skylines and commanded boardrooms can’t drive a screw into a piece of pine.
