“I hear you saying you think your friends see your marriage as perfect, and you’re not ready to let that facade go just yet?” Dr. Elowen’s voice had taken on a soft, coaxing sound.
Gwen was quiet, but her expression crumpled slightly at that.
Dr. Elowen paused, then looked thoughtful. “Telling your friends the truth doesn’t have to feel like admitting failure. It could mean admitting that you’re in a season of change. That you’re trying to do something hard. That honesty doesn’t have to be a final chapter. It can just be the next page. None of that is a weakness, Maggie.”
Maggie looked away, toward the sliver of backyard visible through the window. The crepe myrtle bloomed stubbornly in the heat. “I don’t know how to do that. Without breaking something.”
“What isn’t broken already?” Gwen asked quietly.
The words sat between them like a shard of glass.
Dr. Elowen let the silence stretch. Then: “So. Do you continue the lie? Or do you make space for a more complicatedtruth? One that might hurt but might also let you breathe again?”
Maggie hated how much she wanted that. The breathing. The clarity. The relief of saying, out loud, what she said in her head every night: This isn’t working. We’re not okay. I don’t know if we’ll make it.
Dr. Elowen’s voice came soft but steady. “You don’t have to make a decision about your marriage today. But you can decide whether you want to keep pretending. Or whether it’s time to let people see where you really are. Secrets are so heavy to carry alone.”
Maggie swallowed. “What if where we are is just… lost?”
Dr. Elowen smiled faintly. “Then maybe the next step is making a decision.”
Maggie stared at the screen. At Gwen. At herself, that tiny square of herself. And for the first time in a long time, she felt something shift.
Not fixed. Not healed. But maybe ready to try.
“Okay,” she said softly. “I’ll think about telling them. About starting with the truth.”
Dr. Elowen nodded. “That’s all I ask. The next honest step.”
What seemedsimple in therapy rarely had a way of remaining simple.Just tell your friends, Dr. Elowen had said. How hard could it be to just be honest?
The conversation with Dr. Elowen had left her feeling like she’d been emotionally sandblasted. Too much rawness, not enough buffer. All this talk about choices — decisions, action. Maggie made decisions all day long. For the shop. For the kids. For Gwen, more than half the time. Her life was a one-woman circus act of to-do lists, quick pivots, and keeping fragile things from breaking.
She wasn’t indecisive. She was just tired.
She got through the rest of the day spinning ways the conversation could go in her head. She’d call Kiera. FaceTime her. No, call. It’d be better not to see her face. Or should it be Izzy? Something about the earnest, calm way Izzy looked at her, held her through her grief… had done so twice now. Maybe she’d better tell Kiera and Izzy at the same time. She texted them while folding laundry after dinner, asking if they were around and free for a chat.
“Mama, bath time!” Rosie cannonballed into her legs, squealing as Jude chased after her, while Arlo buzzed down the hallway in sock feet, yelling something about an alien sighting in the laundry room.
“Do you think you got more avocado in your mouth or your hair tonight?” Maggie teased.
Rosie lifted a hand to her hair, then wrinkled her nose in a mischievous smile. “Maybe my hair.”
“Let’s take a bath in Mama’s bathroom, far away from those pesky alien invaders in the laundry room,” Maggie suggested, reaching to corral the boys upstairs with her.
After a particularly chaotic bath time where Jude showed off his newfound passion for singing the chorus of “Yellow Submarine” thirty-seven times, she let the boys pick out pajamas while she brushed Rosie’s hair, leaning in to press her nose against the gentle scent of watermelon shampoo.
Most days, she didn’t feel like she was good enough at anything, but here? She never had to question that this was exactly where she belonged.
They all crammed into Rosie’s bed to read a chapter ofFantastic Mr. Fox, then both boys separated into their own bedrooms. She wished everyone good night and had that familiar, bittersweet squeeze in her chest of feeling simultaneously grateful for the break and missing her kids already.
She opened the door to her office, which had become more of a kid’s storage room for now, to track down a button that she had to sew back onto Jude’s pants. Once,she’d spent hours in this room, making art with abandon. Going to grad school for art history and criticism had sucked a lot of the joy out of creating for the sake of creating, and having less time to be by herself meant having the actual energy for projects was rare. She’d never tell Gwen that she was jealous of Gwen’s hours every day to think only of her own projects — when was the last time Maggie had that kind of freedom? The privilege to stay home with the kids was just that — a privilege — and she recognized that she was lucky to be able to do so, but it came with its own trade-offs in self-actualization. One reason she’d been stalling the divorce was that she selfishly couldn’t envisionnotbeing home with the kids, and how did she and Gwen reconcile that?
Dozens of half-finished projects sat around the room, mostly for the kids’ sensory bins or costumes or random ideas she’d hyperfixated on. She opened a drawer and found the button she was looking for, then walked out of the room without looking back.
She escaped to the back patio with her phone. She didn’t bother with a drink. Just needed air, a few minutes of quiet, and the illusion that her life was something she could still control. The summer heat clung to her skin even after sunset, the air thick with humidity and the scent of crepe myrtles and grilling meat from a neighbor’s yard. Cicadas screamed from the live oaks overhead, and the patio chair creaked as she sat, letting the warmth of the cushion seep into her legs. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked and a screen door slammed. The night had that distinct Austin texture — soft and slow and sticky.
She dialed Kiera, hoping this conversation wouldn’t feel as awkward as their last.
