I should have been angry. Or crushed. But I wasn't. There was just this feeling—this shapeless, colorless weight that sat on my chest and pressed down. A heavy fog of confusion that made my ribs feel too tight around my heart, like my own body was closing in on itself.
I slid down to the floor, my back against the cabinets, gasping for air that wouldn't come. The edges of my vision were going dark and fuzzy, and somewhere in the back of my mind I knew I was having a panic attack, but knowing didn't help. Nothing helped.
The phone buzzed again.
I stared at it from the floor, three feet away on the counter, the screen lighting up. It was the same number. She was calling back.
I watched the phone spin on the counter, unable to move, unable to think. It vibrated against the granite like something alive and angry.
And then it stopped.
The kitchen went silent again except for my ragged breathing.
I closed my eyes and pressed my face against my knees, trying to slow my heart, trying to breathe, trying to remember how to exist in a world where my husband had been driving to another woman when he died.
And she still didn't know he was gone.
Chapter 7
Ben
Iwas taking a sledgehammer to the Bradshaw’s master bath when the phone buzzed against my thigh.
I ignored it. I had a rhythm going—swing, impact, the crunch of tile, the exhale of dust. It was the only time in the last few days my head had been quiet. Destruction was simple. It was physics. You apply enough force to a rigid object, and the object yields. It doesn't argue, it doesn't lie, and it doesn't wrap itself around a guardrail on Route 9.
I swung again. The sledge connected with a satisfyingthwack, sending a spiderweb of cracks through the green ceramic.
The phone buzzed again. Long, insistent vibrations that I could feel through the denim and the layer of drywall dust coating my skin.
I let the hammer head drop to the subfloor with a heavy thud. The silence that rushed back into the room was ringing in my ears, louder than the noise had been. I stripped off my work gloves and dug the phone out of my back pocket.
Two missed calls. Olivia.
My thumb hovered over the screen. I knew I should call her back. I knew that’s what a good friend did—the best man, thepallbearer, the guy who stood at the grave as his best friend turned into a memory. But my chest felt compressed, like I was stuck in a crawlspace with the oxygen running out.
Then, the text came through.
I found Ryan's phone. We need to talk.
The air in the room suddenly felt too thin, choked with drywall and fiberglass. I stared at the screen, leaving a smudge of white dust on the glass.
She knew.
Or she was about to.
I shoved the phone back in my pocket and walked out. I didn't bother sweeping up the debris. I didn't cover the exposed plumbing or lock the job box. I just walked out the front door, past the dumpster in the driveway that was already half-full of the Bradshaw's old life, and climbed into my truck.
I sat there for a minute, trying to stop my thoughts from racing and failing miserably. My knuckles were white, caked with grime. The cab smelled like sawdust and stale coffee. The smell of my life, simple and un-complicated until last week.
I’d known this was coming, of course. You can’t build a life on a cracked foundation and expect it to hold. Structural integrity doesn't care about your feelings; if the load is too heavy for the support beam, the beam snaps.
That’s just gravity.
I’d told him that. Not in those words, but close enough.
I closed my eyes and, for a moment, I was back in that diner booth a week ago. It was the first time I’d seen Ryan in months. He looked terrible—eyes bloodshot, skin sallow, vibrating with the kind of nervous energy that usually means a guy is in deep with a bookie or a drug dealer. But Ryan was none of thesethings. He was an architect, and he didn't have vices. He just had weaknesses.
"I don't know what to do, Ben," he’d said, stirring sugar into a coffee he hadn't touched. He kept looking out the window, like he was afraid someone was watching us.
