I needed to keep my brain occupied, or the next stop was either doomscrolling social media for signs of another woman or dissolving into a puddle of tears on his couch for believing, even for a second, that he would be any different now than when we split.
But busy was my superpower. Busy had gotten me through the aftermath, the funerals, the empty rooms. Busy could handle a storm and an empty house and an ex-husband who might have been screwing his way through Summit Ridge or—at the very least—ghosting me while he figured out what to do with the emotional Chernobyl I’d left on his couch last night.
So, I started cleaning.
Not because it needed doing—Teddy’s cabin was nearly sterile, a minimalist’s wet dream—but because I needed something to control. Our clothes from yesterday sat in a damp heap near the fireplace where he’d left them. I doused my bloody, dry-clean-only sweater with hydrogen peroxide and hoped for the best, while the rest of our things went into the wash. The machine hummed to life, and I escaped back to the kitchen before I started crying over the sight of his jeans tumbling around the washer with mine again.
After washing the three measly dishes in the sink, I decided thesituation called for breakfast casserole. Because nothing said “I’m completely fine with you leaving me all alone after the most confusing night of my post-divorce life” like pork sausage and enough cheese to clog some arteries.
I pulled the carton of eggs from the fridge, the overpriced organic ones I’d risked my life for, along with some bell peppers, sausage, and cheese. I moved through the motions without conscious thoughts, having made the casserole so many times that I could probably do it in a coma.
It was Teddy’s favorite, the one he requested every Christmas morning until it became tradition. Even that last horrible Christmas, when we could barely look at each other across the table, I’d made it. Addie had eaten two servings while staring blankly at the empty chair. Sky had pushed hers around her plate and rattled on about her classes, pretending everything was normal. And Teddy and I had choked down every bite in complete and utter silence.
Now here I was, making it again in his kitchen, wearing his shirt. And he was, as usual, gone.
The definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results. By that measure, I should have been committed years ago.
The casserole went into the oven, with the timer set for fifty minutes. Fifty minutes to figure out what the hell I was doing, why I was still in my ex-husband’s cabin, why his mother’s words kept echoing in my head.
People who love each other the way you two do find their way back.
Except sometimes love wasn’t enough. Sometimes love was the heaviest thing you carried, the weight that pulled you beneath the surface when you were already treading water. We’d loved each other through fertility treatments and pregnancies, through sleepless nights and teenage rebellions, through a thousand small disasters and one enormous one. But that last one had broken something fundamental, turned love into something that hurt to look at directly.
I wiped down counters that didn’t need it, arranged dish towels that were already perfectly hung. This was what I did now—played at being useful, at being needed, even when no one was asking. It waseasier than admitting that I didn’t know who I was when I wasn’t taking care of someone. Two years of therapy, and I still couldn’t quite figure out how to exist without defaulting to caretaker mode.
The washing machine buzzed, and I transferred everything to the dryer before catching sight of my reflection in the tempered glass on his gun cabinet.
I looked like something from some post-apocalyptic TV series—bandaged head, tangled hair, wearing a shirt that was too big. I needed a shower. Needed to wash off the accident, the night, the lingering feeling of his arms around me. Needed to stop playing house in a life that wasn’t mine anymore.
8
kelsey
Teddy’s guestbathroom was exactly what I’d come to expect from his new minimalist lifestyle. White subway tile stretched from floor to ceiling, the dark grout lines giving it a clean, industrial edge. An exposed copper pipe fed into a rainfall shower head behind a glass shower door framed in matte black steel.
Black-and-white hexagon tiles formed a precise pattern along the floor, making the space feel more like a city loft apartment than a mountain cabin.
But it was the collection of bath products in the shower that made my eyebrows climb toward my hairline. Verbena shower gel, lavender shampoo with prebiotic, and even the almond shower oil I used to hide in the cabinet beneath the bathroom sink like contraband.
The same expensive products he’d grumbled about during our marriage, claiming they were identical to the stuff they sold in the drugstore, just with fancy labels.
Either he’d developed a sudden appreciation for luxury bath products, or someone else was using his shower. Someone who shared my affinity for overpriced toiletries and burly bikers.
Of course. The mysterious H probably stayed over often enough to warrant her own shower products. The fancy kind, because Teddy would want to spoil his new woman. Give her all the things he’d complained about giving me.
God, I was a fool. Standing here making his favorite breakfast while he was probably at her place, explaining how his ex-wife had shown up like some deranged stalker.
I cranked the water as hot as I could stand it before stepping under the spray, letting it pound the tension from my neck and shoulders. If only it could erase the memory of Teddy’s hands on my frozen skin, the feel of his breath against my neck, the way he’d called me baby like the past two years hadn’t happened.
Verbena-scented steam filled the small enclosure as I washed the dried blood and sweat from my skin, hating how it immediately transported me back to lazy Sunday mornings when we still showered together, his hands sliding over my soapy skin while the kids watched cartoons downstairs.
My oat milk latte soured in my stomach at the thought of another woman standing exactly where I stood, giggling at the scrape of his beard against her neck.
Shampoo suds made their way down my forehead and into my eyes. At least, that was what I told myself. The alternative—that I was crying in my ex-husband’s shower over the thought of him showering with someone who wasn’t me—made me sound unhinged.
By the time I stepped out, my skin was pink and tender, but at least I felt clean. Human, even. After brushing my teeth with his toothbrush—because apparently boundaries meant nothing to me anymore—I knotted a towel around my body and opened the bathroom door, running right into Teddy.
The duffel bag he was carrying hit the floor with a heavy thud, its contents spilling out like evidence at a crime scene—my clothes, medications, and the lingerie I’d packed in a moment of temporary insanity.
