Leaving the balcony door open, I step out of the room and into the hallway. The bedroom is too small now, too suffocating. In fact the entire apartment is. I can’t bear to be in here. Everything I see feels like a traitor to me. Did these very walls know what was going on before I did? Did they see their displays of affection?
I suddenly hate the furniture too. The couch where we used to cuddle up together watching a film. The kitchen island where we shared meals, laughed, planned our future together. All of it feels contaminated now, like I don’t belong here anymore.
Gabriel and Scarlett went to bed about an hour ago. But before they did, one after the other, they knocked on the door, asking to talk, to explain. Saying they made a mistake.
A mistake is forgetting to pick up milk at the store, or missing a birthday because you lost track of the date. A mistake is a single bad decision, made in the heat of the moment and never repeated.
This was three months. Three months of lying to my face, of secrets slotted between the ordinary days of our life. This was a series of choices made in secret, over time, while looking me in the eye and pretending nothing was wrong.
I slip out the front door quietly, careful not to make a sound that might alert them. I can’t face either of them right now.
The moment my feet sink into the cool sand a few minutes later, something inside me loosens. The water curls around my ankles, and the rhythm of the waves steadies my breathing, reminding me that my body is still here, still intact. That this pain, as unbearable as it feels, hasn’t killed me and doesn’t have to.
There’s laughter down the beach, distant but loud enough to carry over to me. A party maybe, because there’s music. There are people out there enjoying themselves, untouched by the quiet devastation unfolding inside me. I almost hate them for being happy.
I stand there, staring out at the dark ocean, the same ocean everyone claims took my daughter from me. The same ocean that was meant to explain her disappearance, to close the case, end the search, give me closure.
Even now, I can’t picture it. I can’t feel it at all. If Sadie is dead, and I refuse to believe she is, it didn’t happen like that. She didn’t drown. My body rejects the idea the way it did the other day I stood in this water.
I turn away and head back toward the apartment.
There are only twenty steps to climb, but it feels like more than that. With each step, my vision swims and sweat trickles down my spine, the rest of my body finally reacting to everything I’ve been holding inside. It all takes so much effort and my heart pounds so fast, so hard that I feel a wave of dizziness coming on.
Two steps from the top, my legs give out and I collapse. My forehead pressed to my knees, I breathe through the dizziness until the world steadies itself again. But I don’t get up immediately. I don’t know how many minutes I sit there waiting and I don’t care.
Eventually, I force myself upright and enter the apartment to find Gabriel standing in the hallway, like he’s been waiting for me. He must have heard me leave, after all.
“Please leave me alone.” I try to step around him on my way to my room. “I have nothing to say to you.”
He tries to reach for my arm, but I wrench it free. “Don’t ever touch me!” That’s all it takes to break the damn of words I could not say earlier. “How could you do this to me?” The question bursts out of me, raw and sharp, before I can stop it.
“I’m sorry.” Tears fill his eyes. I wish I could care that he’s crying for me. I wish I even believed it’s for me and not because his secret is out in the open. “It was a stupid mistake,” he says again.
“And how many times did that mistake happen?”
He shrinks back, his chest shuddering again and again with sobs, his fingers trembling at his sides.
From the corner of my eye, I see Scarlett’s door crack open, then she’s standing there, half-hidden, as if she’s unsure whether to step forward or retreat back into the room.
“Three months?” I say quietly, both to him and his lover.
Gabriel doesn’t answer. He doesn’t need to.
“There’s one thing I need to know,” I continue, my voice eerily calm. “Is it still happening?” It doesn’t really matter sincethis marriage is probably already over, but a part of me needs to know.
“No.” He meets my gaze head on. “It ended after Sadie disappeared. I swear. It was three months and that’s it.”
I let out a chuckle. “How can I ever trust anything you say again?”
“You don’t have to. But I’m telling you the truth. I will live with this guilt for the rest of my life. I’m so sorry.”
As I recall, he didn’t even want Scarlett to tell me.
Tears continue to slide down his face, and the sight does nothing for me. I don’t feel one shred of sympathy for him.
“You can’t undo this, Gabriel, not with words.” I turn toward my bedroom, ready to shut the door on this conversation. Then I stop and face him again in the hallway, remembering broken pieces of Scarlett’s words.
What if she finds her and?—?
