Chapter 25
Maggie
Colette’s guest bed wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t hers.
Too many pillows, too much lavender spray on the sheets, the mattress firm enough to remind Maggie she was supposed to be a guest, not a resident.
She blinked awake to sunlight slicing between the curtains and the muted sound of Colette clinking around the kitchen downstairs.
An open sketchbook she’d been idly drawing in the night before lay open on her nightstand — the first time she’d sketched in a long time. The figure wasn’t meant to be Gwen, and Maggie had abandoned the sketch the second she realized what she was doing.
Her head throbbed faintly — too much wine, too little water — and her chest carried that familiar morning-after heaviness, like grief and hangover had joined forces.
Couples therapy day. Thankfully, Maggie had requested this one be virtual, saving herself the stress of sitting in the same room as Gwen.
She dragged herself upright, pulled on a hoodie, and walked downstairs.
The coffee was already brewing, the kitchen smelling rich and warm. Colette stood at the counter arranging stems of eucalyptus in a stone vase, looking like a moody French lifestyle blog, and Maggie muttered, “Thanks,” by way of good morning.
Colette only smirked, poured her a mug, and said, “Good luck.”
Maggie balanced her laptop on her lap in the guest bedroom, still barefoot, still bleary, trying to center herself before Dr. Elowen’s face blinked onto the screen. The little video squares populated — herself on the left, the therapist in the center, and Gwen on the right.
Gwen sat at the kitchen table. Their kitchen table. Sunlight streamed through the windows behind her, bouncing off the familiar cabinets, the fridge covered in crayon drawings and magnets from road trips. Maggie’s stomach pinched, like she was trespassing in her own life.
And Gwen, immaculate as ever, hair neat, expression closed, as if she’d stepped into a deposition instead of therapy.
“Good morning,” Dr. Elowen said warmly, her square lighting up in the center of the video screen. “How are we all doing today?”
Maggie shifted, the mattress creaking under her weight, someone else’s life folded into crisp sheets. She took a sip of coffee to stall. “Peachy.”
Across the screen, Gwen gave the faintest nod.
The therapist’s eyes moved between them. “Last session, we touched on space — what it gives, what it costs. Today, I’d like to talk about communication. How you connect, especially as you navigate parenting together.”
Maggie rubbed a hand over her face. “Well, we don’t. Communicate, I mean. Not really.”
“That’s not true,” Gwen said, calm. Too calm. “We coordinate schedules, drop-offs, school events.”
“That’s not communication,” Maggie snapped, then sighed. “That’s logistics.”
Gwen’s jaw flexed, but she didn’t argue.
“Can you each describe what communication looks like, ideally?” Dr. Elowen asked.
Maggie gave a humorless laugh. “Ideally? I can tell her I’m falling apart without feeling like I’m burdening her.
It’s her looking up from her laptop long enough to actually notice.
” She glanced at her own square in the corner, the faint hollows under her eyes.
“It’s not me screaming just to get a reaction.
Which I did. I weaponized how bad I felt, because at least then she couldn’t ignore me. But it wasn’t fair. To her. Or to me.”
Gwen’s gaze dipped down.
“And for you, Gwen?” Dr. Elowen urged.
“Clear. Concise. Without volatility. I need space to think before I respond. I don’t want to be ambushed.”
Maggie’s laugh cracked sharp. “Yeah, well, news flash: Life doesn’t schedule meltdowns for your convenience.
” Her voice softened as she tried to calm her own nerves.
“I know I ambushed you. I wanted you to just… know what I needed without me saying it, and when you didn’t, I came at you sideways. That’s on me.”
“Which is exactly why—” Gwen stopped, jaw tightening again.
Dr. Elowen lifted a hand. “Let’s pause. What I’m hearing is that Maggie values immediacy and vulnerability, while Gwen values order and reflection. Neither is wrong, but they clash.”
Maggie rubbed her temples. “They clash us right into the ground.”
The silence stretched. Then Dr. Elowen said gently, “You mentioned something happened on your Las Vegas trip. Would you be willing to talk about that today?”
Maggie paused, glancing to Gwen’s stoic face, and she almost made a joke, but instead, she said, “We slept together. And I told myself it didn’t mean anything.
” Her thumb worried the chipped rim of her mug.
“But it did. For one night, it felt like I had her back. And then she woke me up to take a call, and I panicked, because I knew nothing had changed.”
Across the screen, Gwen’s throat worked.
Finally, she said, “I thought it was a beginning. I thought maybe the pieces we broke could fit again. And when you said it didn’t mean anything, it felt like losing you all over again.
” Her voice cracked before she steadied it.
“I’ve spent years trying not to need more from you than you could give me.
But that night? That morning? I wanted more. I still do.”
Maggie pressed her palm to her chest, trying to keep steady. “And I can’t trust that you’ll ever put me first. You haven’t shown me that. You didn’t show me that when you had the chance.”
The therapist nodded, voice calm. “What I hear is that night revealed there’s still love between you. But love alone isn’t enough. What you do with it matters.”
“Yeah, well, what we do is fight,” Maggie muttered.
Gwen’s square flickered as she leaned closer. “We fight because you go for the jugular every time. You don’t leave room for anything but your crisis in that moment.”
“And you don’t fight at all,” Maggie shot back, her voice sharper than she meant, bouncing back tinny through her laptop speakers.
“You shut down. You disappear into work, into silence, until I’m screaming just to hear something back.
Do you have any idea how lonely that is? To be married and still alone?”
Gwen’s voice rose, steadier than Maggie wanted. “Do you have any idea how exhausting it is to walk into a room and never know if I’m going to be greeted with love or a land mine?”
The guest room felt too small, her chest too tight. Maggie stared at the square of her own kitchen, the woman sitting in it, the life she used to live.
Her throat burned. “This is exactly it. You want order, I want connection, and neither of us is getting it. I think—” She forced the word out, jagged and final. “I think the only answer is divorce.”
The word didn’t echo. It just hung between their rectangles, heavy as stone.
Maggie’s pulse thudded in her ears, louder than the faint hum of Colette’s guest room radiator. Her cursor blinked at the bottom of the Zoom window, taunting her with Leave Meeting like an escape hatch she didn’t dare use.
In Gwen’s box, nothing moved. Gwen sat still, hands folded, as steady and unreachable as a statue.
Maggie tried to swallow, but her mouth was sandpaper. The word she’d said — divorce — still scraped at her insides, like it had hooked on something deep.
She hated how badly she wanted Gwen to interrupt, to argue, to refuse. To say no, we can fix this, I still choose you. But Gwen didn’t even blink.
A wave of nausea rose sharp in her gut. She shifted against the headboard, grounding herself in the borrowed space: the lavender-scented sheets, the faint creak of pipes in the walls, nothing of hers. Not her room. Not her house. Not her life.
Dr. Elowen was sitting calmly in her own square, giving them time.
The silence grew unbearable.
She cleared her throat, voice shaky. “Say something.”
Gwen’s square stayed still, only the faint rise and fall of her chest proving the connection hadn’t frozen. Maggie gripped her mug tighter, wishing she could reach through the screen, shake her, force her into motion.
Because silence had always been Gwen’s sharpest blade.
Maggie blinked hard, vision stinging. Divorce. She’d meant it. She’d said it. But saying it out loud didn’t feel like relief, didn’t feel like strength. It felt like watching herself step off a ledge in slow motion, body waiting for the crash that hadn’t come yet.
“Do you believe that too, Gwen?” Dr. Elowen asked softly. “That divorce is the only option?”
For a long moment, Gwen said nothing.
And Maggie — staring at the woman she’d once believed would always choose her — felt the answer settle in her bones, whether Gwen spoke it or not.
Gwen didn’t look at her. She looked past the camera, at some fixed point only she could see, and said, evenly, “If that’s what you want, I’ll give it to you.”
The words were clean. Bloodless. Like a doctor delivering terrible test result news.
Maggie’s mouth went dry. For half a second she wanted to snatch them back — no, not like that, not so easy — but the reflex died as quickly as it came. Of course Gwen would make even this tidy.
Dr. Elowen’s voice was soft. “What comes up for you hearing that, Maggie?”
She stared at the little square of her own face. Puffy-eyed. A hoodie with a ketchup stain. Colette’s camp movie posters over the bed. “I don’t know.”
A beat. The therapist waited. Gwen’s shoulders were so straight they looked painful.
“We don’t have to decide anything final today,” Dr. Elowen said. “A statement of intent isn’t the same as filing paperwork.”
Gwen nodded, still not meeting the camera. “I’ll contact a mediator. It’s cleaner.”
There it was again: cleaner. Maggie pictured bleach wipes and color-coded folders and the way Gwen’s hands had felt on her in Vegas, desperate and sure. The two images didn’t reconcile. Maybe that was the point.
“Okay,” Maggie said. The syllables felt like swallowing a coin. “A mediator.”
When the session ended, Dr. Elowen thanked them for their honesty. The squares blinked: therapist gone, Gwen still there. For a second neither of them moved.