He releases the handle and takes a small step back, releasing a long breath as if starting over.
I don’t move. I don’t relax. I keep the mop against my shoulder, my fingers still locked around the handle, my body still braced.
“What are you doing here?” I ask. My voice is thin, stripped of the strength I feel in my hands.
The thinness is a betrayal. I want my voice to be strong. I want it to be a wall he cannot climb. But it comes out small, uncertain, the voice of the woman he used to know.
He looks at me as if I’ve asked a foolish question.
The look is familiar. Too familiar.
“I’m here to take you home.” He drags a hand through his hair, his exhale unsteady. “I know you’re angry. I know you want to punish me. But filing for divorce, Nora? That’s… that’s too far.”
Punish him?
“What…?”
He keeps going, talking over my silence.
“What’s done is done. We can’t live in the past. Let’s just…” He makes a vague, dismissive gesture. The gesture is casual, almost careless, as if the past is a piece of lint on his sleeve, something to be brushed away. “Put this behind us. Start fresh.”
He reaches for my hand.
A violent, defensive instinct seizes me, and I jerk my arm back before his fingers can make contact.
His expression crumples—confusion and wounded pride—but I feel nothing for it.
“I don’t want to go back,” I say, my voice quiet but clear.
His breath catches.
Before he can respond, someone steps into the space beside me.
I feel her before I see her. Her warmth. Her quiet confidence. She positions herself shoulder to shoulder beside me, close enough to say:I am here.
“Nora?” Maeve’s voice is calm but carries a clear, protective edge. “Is there a problem?”
Julian turns to her, his posture turning rigidly formal. I have seen this posture before—at dinner parties, at work functions, at the moments when he needs to remind someone of his status, his importance, his place in the world. His shoulders square. His chin lifts. His voice drops into the register he uses when he is speaking to someone he considers beneath him.
“This is a private conversation,” he says, his tone sharp. “We don’t need—”
“I wasn’t talking to you,” Maeve cuts him off.
She doesn’t raise her voice. She doesn’t need to. The words themselves are enough.
Julian goes rigid, the dismissal striking a nerve.
I see it in the set of his jaw, the flare of his nostrils, his hands curling at his sides. He is not used to being dismissed. Not used to being told that his presence is not required, his opinion not solicited.
Before the tension can escalate, I find my voice.
“Julian, you need to leave.”
His head snaps toward me, his eyes wide and desperate, his lip trembling. The desperation is real. I see it in his searching gaze—looking for a crack, a softening, any sign that I don’t mean what I am saying.
He draws a ragged breath. “Nora, please. I know I hurt you. I am so sorry.” The words tumble out, rehearsed and weightless at the same time. He has said them before. A hundred times. A thousand. In the kitchen, in the bedroom. “But we can’t fix this if you just run away. Please, just come home and we’ll talk.”
Run away.
