“New?” Melinda echoed. “Is that good or bad?”
Gwen huffed a laugh. “It’s really bright and soulless, but it’s still nice at the same time. I don’t know how to explain it right.”
“Don’t,” Melinda said, taking a slow sip. “You don’t have to.”
Gwen wrapped her hands around her glass, fingers tight on the condensation. “I just… I thought I was doing it all for us. Working late, taking every project, building something big enough to carry both of us. And all she saw was me… gone.”
It was more than she’d meant to say. She clamped her mouth shut, cheeks heating.
Melinda set her glass down with a precise click. “You don’t owe me an explanation, Gwen.”
“I know.” Gwen hesitated. “I just — I can’t say it to anyone else.”
Melinda regarded her coolly, eyes sharp in the low bar light. For a long moment Gwen thought she wasn’t going to answer at all. Then Melinda leaned back, her posture elegant, detached. “I do understand, you know. I’ve been divorced twice.”
Gwen blinked. “Really?”
A faint, knowing smile. “Yes. Both times, the job came first. It always did. It always will.”
The words landed like a verdict, unflinching. Gwen felt them settle heavy in her chest. “And you don’t regret it?”
Melinda lifted her glass, swirling the liquid slowly before answering. “Regret?” She shook her head. “No. I’m proud of what I’ve built. My career gave me more than either marriage ever could. Stability. Recognition. Power. It’s not romantic, but it’s the truth.”
She looked directly at Gwen, her gaze cutting clean through. “You can try to pretend you can give both the work and the marriage your all, but one will always suffer. I chose not to be mediocre at either. I chose to give my all to the work.”
The truth of it pressed in on Gwen, sharp and suffocating. Maggie’s face rose unbidden — her grief, her laughter, her warmth — and Gwen’s chest seized. She’d always told herself she was the steady one, the provider, the ballast. But what had she really provided? She hadn’t been carrying Maggie at all. She’d been carrying the job.
Melinda tipped her chin, eyes glittering. “It isn’t compartments, Gwen. It’s priorities. I think you and I are a lot alike in that way. We just find work to be the most rewarding part of our lives, and society says that’s wrong because we’re women, but only we get to say what’s right for us.”
Gwen nodded, mostly because Melinda was still her superior, and tried not to give in to her impulse to yellNo. I’m not like that. I’m more than that.Instead, she sipped her drink in silence.
On the walk back to her car, Gwen’s phone buzzed again. The calendar notification glowed:Trip to Michigan — 4 days. Kids with Gwen.
She clenched the phone in her hand, the bitterness cutting sharp. Maggie off with their friends, Gwen left behind with the silence again.
And for the first time, she wondered if Melinda’s story wasn’t a warning at all, but a prophecy.
Two divorces, a glittering career, the kind of résumé people pointed to with admiration — and Melinda had sat there in the dim light, unapologetic. No regret in her voice, no wistfulness. Just steel. The job had come first. Always. And she was proud of it.
The words echoed long after. Gwen had followed the same map: build walls out of deadlines, stack accolades like bricks, convince yourself it was noble to be the steady one, the provider. But pride didn’t keep the apartment warm at night.
Her marriage hadn’t ended in a single break. It was death by a thousand cuts. Missed birthdays. Canceled weekends. Her phone always within reach, Maggie’s laugh sharpening until it lost its sweetness. And then the final cut: Gwen carrying her boxes into a sterile two-bedroom, while Maggie explained to the kids in careful phrases about “Mommy’s new place” and “different houses, same love.”
Now, the silence was everywhere. Custody schedules taped to the fridge. The coffee pot set for one. The kids’ toothbrushes in a cup by the sink, a reminder of weekends that passed too quickly. She saw the outline of absence everywhere — the space on the couch where Maggie used to sit, the side of the bed that never dipped anymore.
She sat in the driver’s seat outside her building, hands locked on the wheel, throat tight. She used to imagine growing old with Maggie, their kids loud around the dinner table, holidays crammed into a house that always felt toosmall. Now the image dissolved every time she reached for it. What remained was silence, and the weight of her own choices.
Maybe she was already too far down the road Melinda had walked. Maybe the truth was simpler: She had lost Maggie. She had lost the life they built. And prestige — the projects, the titles, the praise — wasn’t going to fill the empty rooms.
CHAPTER 25
Maggie
Colette’s guestbed wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t hers. Too many pillows, too much lavender spray on the sheets, the mattress firm enough to remind Maggie she was supposed to be a guest, not a resident. She blinked awake to sunlight slicing between the curtains and the muted sound of Colette clinking around the kitchen downstairs.
An open sketchbook she’d been idly drawing in the night before lay open on her nightstand — the first time she’d sketched in a long time. The figure wasn’t meant to be Gwen, and Maggie had abandoned the sketch the second she realized what she was doing.
Her head throbbed faintly — too much wine, too little water — and her chest carried that familiar morning-after heaviness, like grief and hangover had joined forces.
