"I'm going for a walk," she said. "I need to think."
"Take the south trail. The footing's better in the morning."
"I know." A pause. "I've been here three weeks, Cliff. I know the trails."
She left. I watched her cross the clearing and take the trailhead, her new hiking shoes finding the path without hesitation, and something in my chest went tight.
I went inside.
The cabin was full of her. Her laptop on the dining table next to the mason jar of wildflowers she'd picked, purple lupine going soft at the edges. Her phone charger plugged in by the bookshelf. Mud tracked in on the mat by the door.
I started cleaning. Wiped the counter. Straightened the chairs. Moved to the table to clear the topo maps I'd left, and her laptop screen lit up when I bumped the trackpad.
I wasn't looking. Then I was.
The email was open. A thread, several messages deep, with a name at the top I'd never seen: Marcy Ferrante, Ferrante & Associates, San Francisco.
Re: Chambers-Masterson — Dissolution Timeline
My hand stopped on the table. The words were right there, bright on the screen, and I read them the way you read a road sign coming at you too fast to look away.
Nell — Per our initial timeline, filing can commence once pregnancy is confirmed. Given the 12-month residency provision, I recommend we prepare the petition in advance. Standard no-fault, asset division per the prenuptial waiverhe signed through the app. You retain full custody per the agreement terms we discussed. I'll need 30 days' notice before you intend to return to San Francisco.
I scrolled. There were more. Dates, legal language, a timeline laid out in the same organized columns Nell used for everything. The plan was clean and thorough and it covered the full arc: marry, conceive, carry to term, divorce, return to the city. She'd given it the full client-presentation treatment — milestones and contingencies and a section labeled Exit Logistics that included forwarding her mail.
I sat down.
The wildflowers were right there, in the jar between my maps and her laptop. I stared at them, trying to make the woman who'd picked lupine by the trail yesterday fit with the woman who'd hired a divorce attorney before she'd driven into Cedar Bluff.
She'd never planned to stay. Every morning in my shirt, every meal at this table, the grandmother's French toast, the bouldering wall, the swimming hole — all of it was the setup for a departure she'd scheduled before she knew my name. She'd come here with a return ticket, and I'd been falling for a woman who was running the same con I was, except hers was better organized.
I closed the laptop. Stood up. Sat back down.
The 47-page manual was on the counter where it had been for a week, untouched, its edges curling in the humidity. I thought about the night she'd presented it with all the seriousness of a board meeting. I'd wanted to laugh and didn't. Somewhere between that night and this morning it had stopped being funny. It had become evidence of a woman who needed structure because she was afraid of what happened without it.
I heard her on the porch steps. The screen door opened.
She saw my face. She stopped.
"You read my email."
I didn't see the point in lying about it. "Marcy Ferrante. Dissolution timeline. Exit logistics."
The color left her cheeks. She set her jaw — the same tightening I'd seen at the bouldering wall, when she was deciding whether to be afraid or push through.
"Cliff —"
"Get pregnant. Have the baby. Divorce me. Go back to San Francisco." I kept my voice even. "That was the plan."
"Yes." She didn't flinch. "That was the plan."
"From the start."
"From before I got on the plane."
The kitchen was bright with morning sun. The counter stood between us, bare and clean. I gripped the edge of it and breathed.
"So you came here to use me."
