My phone buzzed on the desk.
Callum.
I didn’t answer.
The call rang out, stopped, then immediately started again. I watched his name light up the screen for the second time, and I felt nothing close to panic. Not even anger. Just a tired, flat recognition. The kind I felt when a contractor ignored a structural warning and then called me after the wall cracked.
A problem had become visible.
That didn’t make it mine to fix.
When the call stopped, a voicemail appeared. Then a text.
This has gone on long enough. The gala is in five weeks. We need to present a united front. You’re putting both of us in an impossible position.
I read it once.
Then I set the phone facedown.
Both of us.
Not our marriage. Not the company. Not the clients. Not the truth.
Both of us.
Because that was still how Callum saw the world: a space defined by his image and his inconvenience. His needs, and the people obstructing them. If I wasn’t helping, I was hurting. If I wasn’t quiet, I was unreasonable. If I wasn’t available, I was making things difficult.
I picked up my pen and added another line to the legal pad.
He still thinks my silence belongs to him.
A knock sounded at the door.
“Alive?” Sloane called.
“Unfortunately.”
The door opened a crack, and my sister looked in with two mugs of coffee in her hands and a look of quiet certainty that told me she had already decided what the rest of my day was going to look like. Her hair was clipped up, her glasses were sliding down her nose, and she was wearing a blazer over pajama pants.
“Good,” she said. “Because I made coffee strong enough to qualify as a controlled substance.”
“I love you.”
“I know. That’s why I’m risking my blood pressure.”
She came in and set one mug beside my legal pad. Her eyes dropped to the list, but she didn’t touch it, her hands staying on her own coffee mug.
“That’s a lot,” she said.
“It’s not even all of it.”
Her mouth tightened. “I hate him.”
“You’ve always hated him.”
“I disliked him. There’s a difference. Hate requires evidence. Now I have a spreadsheet.”
A smile touched my mouth. My face didn’t quite know what to do with it.
