Just picked up from daycare. Her hair was slightly messy, a faint smudge of paint still on her cheek, her backpack slipping off one shoulder, her smile wide and unguarded.
I missed her.
My thumb hovered over Avery’s contact. I wanted to call, but it was already late. By now, Haille would be asleep, tucked in after a story I should have been there to read. I exhaled quietly before turning the phone face down and letting sleep take me.
By the endof the first week, the routine had settled into my bones.
Wake. Work. Eat. Sleep.
Emails came in from HR—follow-ups I hadn’t opened yet. Forms to finalize. Documents to acknowledge. The administrative echoes of a marriage ending. I left them unread. Some things required stillness, and my life hadn’t slowed enough to allow it.
On the eighth day, during a lunch break, the managers were casually talking about anything but the project.
Someone laughed and said, “My wife would’ve killed me by now.”
Then another voice chimed in, glancing at me. “What about you, Sir? Your wife ever get tired of you being away this much?”
The word hit harder than it should have. It was meant as a joke. It always was.
I didn’t correct him. Just said, “She understands.”
The second week was harder. Fatigue crept in where adrenaline had carried me before. The nights stretched longer. The quiet pressed closer. I dreamed of my old house once. Nothing dramatic. Just Elena standing in the kitchen, back to me. She smiled when she turned. The smile from before everything unraveled. Before the damage. Before the choice I could never take back. I woke up with my chest tight and no one to answer.
That morning, I finally opened the email.
The court confirmation
Dissolution effective as of—
I closed it before finishing, not because I didn’t know what it said, but because knowing hadn’t made it hurt any less the first time.
On the last day at the project, I stood at the edge of the site and watched the sun dip behind unfinished structures. Concrete dust clung to my boots. My body ached in that dull, familiar way that came from long days on site.
A younger engineer laughed somewhere behind me, complaining about overtime, about missing dinner plans. I almost said something. About how some losses didn’t come with an end date. About how life kept asking things of you even when you were already empty.
But I didn’t, because I’d learned something over the past weeks. Grief didn’t stop the world. It just taught you how to carry weight quietly.
I returned home at the end of the third week.
As soon as I stepped inside, I set my bag down, took off my shoes, and turned on a single lamp.
The place still felt borrowed.
I sat on the edge of the couch and pulled out my phone. There was no reply from Elena, I hadn’t expected one. But there was a short video of Haille, her voice loud and off-key as she sang something she’d made up herself.
“Daddy come home soon,” she said at the end, smiling into the camera like the world had never hurt her.
I watched it twice, then once more, and for the first time since the divorce, I let myself feel it fully—the quiet truth. My marriage had ended. My life hadn’t.
And learning how to live inside that difference would take longer than three weeks.
—?—
The next morning, I didn’t tell Elena I was coming over until I was already in the car. Three weeks on site had felt longer than it should have. Not because the work was difficult, but because every night ended the same way: silence, a hotel room, and a video of my daughter that wasn’t live. I missed her in a way that sat low in my chest, steady and constant.
I texted Elena when I was five minutes away.
I’m back in town.
