But looking at Maggie now, arms crossed like armor, Gwen could see it plain: she had built a fortress around their life, and in the process, locked Maggie out.
Maggie’s mouth twisted, hurt and tired all at once. “I wanted a partner. You kept offering stability when I needed intimacy.”
The room went quiet again, the words sitting heavy between them. Gwen felt something tighten in her chest, like a rope drawn too taut. Because she had believed, truly believed, that steady meant safe. That safe meant loved. Now she was seeing all the ways she’d been wrong.
Maggie stared at her knees, blinking hard. Gwen wanted to reach across the space, wanted to uncross those arms and hold on until Maggie believed her. But she stayed still, nails biting into her own palms.
Because wanting wasn’t enough.
Maggie’s arms stayed folded, but her gaze flicked briefly toward Gwen before dropping again. Her voice softened, almost as if against her will. “I thought… I thought you taking unexpected time off to be with me for this Vegas trip was a good start.” She exhaled sharply, shaking her head. “But then I felt triggered by you working at all hours of the day. And maybe that’s on me, too.”
Gwen blinked, the words catching her off guard. She hadn’t expected that kind of honesty or self-awareness from Maggie when the real separation was so raw.
Maggie’s throat worked. “It’s like, every time your phone buzzes, I brace for impact. I don’t give you a chance to prove it’s different, because I’ve already decided what it means.And maybe that’s not fair. Maybe I’m clinging to the story I wrote about us, that I was always second place, because it’s easier than believing you could change.”
The admission landed in Gwen’s chest with a confusing mixture of relief and devastation. Relief that Maggie still saw the attempt, still noticed her showing up in ways she hadn’t before. Devastation that the moment her phone lit up, all of it crumbled.
The therapist nodded, her tone steady. “So you’re both holding old hurts like evidence. Gwen believed working harder was protecting the marriage. Maggie believed being present was the proof of love. Neither of you said it clearly enough, and now both of you are guarding yourselves with stories that keep the other out.”
Maggie looked up then, meeting Gwen’s eyes for just a beat. There was weariness there, but also honesty. “I don’t want to be stuck in that loop forever. That’s why I need the separation.”
Gwen’s hands clenched in her lap. She wanted to promise she’d never answer another work call again, never touch her phone if Maggie was in the room. But the truth was messier than vows. The truth was they both had to rewrite the stories they’d been telling themselves for years.
And that, Gwen realized, was perhaps impossible.
The session wound down. Maggie grabbed her bag quickly, already halfway out the door before Gwen rose to follow.
On the sidewalk, the sun glaring off car hoods, Gwen finally spoke. “I’ll see you Friday, then, to trade for the weekend.”
Maggie nodded, curt, and slipped into her car.
Gwen stood there a moment longer, hands in her pockets, trying not to feel like she’d just been erased.
CHAPTER 23
Maggie
The bear headwas glaring at her.
Not a real one — though honestly, with Colette, who could say — but a fake taxidermy mount she’d dragged back from some West Texas flea market, swearing it was “the best kind of vintage Americana with a wink.” The fur was stiff and uneven, the glass eyes too shiny. Maggie had been brushing it with a pet grooming glove for fifteen minutes, like she could coax it into looking less like it would consume its owner in the night.
It wasn’t working.
“Stop fussing with it, it’s supposed to look like a fever dream,” Colette called from the back, where she was restacking enamel pitchers. “It’s camp.”
“It’s cursed,” Maggie muttered.
She gave the bear another pass with the brush, and her mind slid where it always did when she wasn’t vigilant — back to therapy. Her own, not couples. She’d only been twice now, but she was already kicking herself for waiting so long. The first session with Lauren had been awkward, all intakeand “I’ve experienced three major losses in the past three years” and a look she imagined Lauren was going to give her a lot, which was kind of a professional version of “yeesh.” But by the second session, Maggie was crying freely and voluntarily connecting the grief of the termination of her pregnancy and the loss of her mother in ways she hadn’t considered before. She had a feeling that therapy was going to be good for her.
Lauren had asked about Gwen, of course. Everyone did, in their own way. But Maggie had dodged, pivoted. And then Lauren had asked something worse: “You said you never stopped running. Running from what?”
Maggie had laughed, loud and sharp. “From the obvious. From the part where my mom dropped dead on a Tuesday afternoon and no one prepared me for how much it would hollow me out.”
The therapist didn’t flinch. “What did that loss mean for you and Gwen?”
And Maggie had said it. The thing she’d been carrying like proof. “She wasn’t there. Not the way I needed. She was… somewhere else with the love of her life — her career. Leaving me to sit on the kitchen floor with casseroles I didn’t eat and the strange bureaucracy of dealing with my mother’s death.”
Her throat had tightened, but she’d kept going. “And once you’ve lived through that? Once you’ve sat in that kind of silence without your person showing up? You don’t forgive it. You can’t.”
