Chapter 4
By morning I had stopped crying. Not because the tears had run out—no.
They'd simply become something useless, like water in a house where the walls have already burned.
I sat in the kitchen in my robe, a cold cup of coffee in front of me, staring out the dark window as it gradually grayed, like the face of a person after bad news.
Damien had been gone all night. His car hadn't returned.
His footsteps hadn't climbed the stairs.
His heavy palm hadn't settled on the bedroom door handle, where I'd been unable to lie down in bed because it smelled too strongly of our former selves: the expensive sheets, his skin, my night cream, that foolish married life that only yesterday had been pretending to be alive.
I didn't sleep. I sat, paced, sat again, went to the study, returned to the bedroom, checked the camera footage, then closed the tablet, then opened it again—as if looking one more time might change the frame, and Damien wouldn't pull Lara toward him after glancing at the doors, wouldn't kiss her quickly and familiarly, and she wouldn't lift a light hair from his shoulder with the hand that wore the bracelet with the garnet stone.
My gift. My house. My husband. My sister.
Everything that was mine had turned out to be just a route they used to reach each other.
At seven in the morning, Sarah, the nanny, walked into the kitchen and stopped at the door.
"Mrs. Grayson?"
I turned my head. I must have looked terrible, because she went pale immediately.
"Please take the children," I said. "Tim to school, Marta to daycare. Tell them I have a headache."
"Of course. Should I call a doctor?"
"No."
"Mr. Grayson—"
"Don't bother him."
I said it and nearly laughed. Don't bother Damien. God, how carefully I was still fencing off his comfort, even standing knee-deep in my own blood.
Sarah nodded and left. Half an hour later, the children came downstairs. Marta was sleepy, her braid askew, in a pink sweater. Tim was already put together—too quiet, too watchful. He came to me first and placed his small palm on the table next to mine.
"Mom, are you sick?"
I looked at him and felt something inside me crack, softly, finally. At six years old, you shouldn't look at your mother as if you're already ready to shield her with your body.
"A little."
"Dad didn't come home?"
I didn't answer right away. Marta was fiddling with her backpack buckle at that moment and wasn't listening, but Tim heard even my silence.
"Dad has things to take care of."
"Urgent again?"
"Yes."
He nodded but didn't believe me. Children only believe words until adults start using them as screens. Tim leaned in and suddenly kissed my cheek. Quickly, shyly, almost angrily.
"I'll be home after school," he said, as if he were promising to return from the front.
When the door closed behind them, I made it to the sink, turned on the water, and doubled over.
I retched on emptiness. There was nothing to bring up, but my body was still trying to expel what it had seen the night before.
The kiss. Lara's smile. His hand on her elbow.
The hair on his shoulder. The note. The red dress.
My bracelet on her wrist. I was shaking so hard my teeth chattered, and at some point a sound tore from my throat—low, ragged, alien.
I grabbed a cup and hurled it at the wall.
The porcelain shattered with such a clean, ringing sound, as if the house had finally told the truth.
"BITCH!" I screamed into the empty kitchen. "BITCH!"
And it wasn't only about Lara. It was about him.
About me. About all those years when I'd been grateful for blows so long as they were delivered in a calm voice.
For every "you heard an insult." For every "don't make that face.
" For every "men of his caliber." I screamed until my throat gave out, then slid down the cabinet to the floor, sat among the shards, and suddenly went calm.
Strangely. Frighteningly. So abruptly, as if someone had shut off the fire alarm inside me and left only the smoke.
I stood up, collected the shards, wiped the floor, washed my face.
Lara arrived at ten fifteen. Without calling, of course.
She always came as if our house were an extension of her apartment.
I saw her through the gate camera and pressed the button myself.
She walked into the foyer with a paper bag from the bakery, in a light coat, fresh, beautiful, slightly tired—just enough to look alive rather than guilty.
"Niki?" she called. "I brought croissants. You barely ate anything last night, so I thought—"
"How thoughtful," I said from the living room.
She walked in and stopped. I was sitting on the couch, legs crossed, a cup of hot tea in my hands.
On the dark screen of the TV, we were both reflected: Lara in light, me in a black house dress, with dry eyes.
I was probably smiling. I could definitely feel a smile on my face.
It was stretched so tight that the skin beneath it nearly cracked.
"You're scaring me," Lara said.
"Really? And you've been scaring me almost my entire life."
She laughed quietly.
"Wow. Philosophy before noon?"
"Didn't sleep."
"Because of Damien?"
"Who else keeps a woman up at night, if she's stupid enough to love her husband?"
Lara set the bag on the coffee table.
"Niki, you've spiraled again. I told you last night—"
"You told me. A lot. Beautifully. Caringly. You have a very pretty mouth, Lara. Even poison comes out of it sounding like advice."
She narrowed her eyes but quickly restored the softness.
"You're angry at me right now because you're in pain."
"Convenient, isn't it? You can always say I'm angry not at the act but from the pain. That I'm just tired. That I've let myself go emotionally. That I'm overreacting. I think you and Damien read the same textbook."
"'You and Damien'?" she repeated.
There. The first tension. Barely perceptible, but I was learning to see. The night with the camera footage had turned me into a bad detective and a very good widow of my own naivety.
"Yes," I said. "You."
Lara took off her coat slowly, hung it on the back of the armchair.
On her wrist, the garnet bracelet glinted.
My gift. I looked at it and almost found it funny.
How generous I'd been. I'd given her jewelry, children to hold, a place in the house, trust, my husband in her line of sight.
Take it all, little sister, I don't mind.
I'll just need to put my life back together afterward.
"Niki," she said more carefully. "What happened?"
"I think Damien is cheating on me."
Lara exhaled. Immediately. Too readily. She came closer, sat on the edge of the armchair across from me, leaned toward me with her whole body, like a doctor toward a patient who was about to start seizing.
"Listen to me. No. Don't think that. You're running on emotion right now, and on emotion women destroy their own lives. Damien is complicated, he's sharp, he can be cold, but cheating... Niki, come on. You know that yourself. He's not like that."
"Not like that?"
"Not cheap."
"Only cheap men cheat?"
"No, but Damien is too smart to dirty his own family."
I smiled wider.
"Funny word."
"Which one?"
"Dirty."
She fell silent.
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
"Like what?"
"Like you want to say something."
"I do."
"Then say it."
I set the cup on the table. Very carefully. The saucer didn't even clink. I liked that. Liked that my hands had stopped shaking.
"Last night I found out that our house has cameras."
Lara didn't flinch. Credit where it's due—she was a talented piece of work. Only her fingers on her knee tightened slightly, so quickly that if I'd blinked, I would have missed it.
"Well, yeah," she said. "Damien has security. You didn't know?"
"Can you imagine—no. I didn't know a lot of things, actually. For example, I didn't know that you can rewind the footage."
The color didn't leave her face entirely. Just her lips.
"Why would you do that?"
"Good question. I asked myself the same thing. Why would a wife watch recordings from her own home? Probably because her husband didn't come home, his pocket smells of another woman, and her own sister spent the whole evening advising her on how to look less pathetic."
"I never—"
"You always."
She stood up.
"Niki, you're being unfair right now."
"Sit down."
The word came out on its own. Sharp. Foreign. Almost Damien-like. Lara froze, and for one second I saw in her eyes the real thing—not care, not pity, not sisterly patience. Anger. Instantaneous, sharp, the offended anger of a person who had suddenly been dared to stop.
"Don't order me around," she said quietly.
"Sit down, Lara. I'm not finished."
"I think you need a sedative."
"And I think you need to learn to kiss in places where there aren't cameras."
Silence crashed down on us with such force that my ears popped.
Lara went white. Completely. Even her makeup couldn't save her. She stared at me, and I watched masks changing inside her head at terrifying speed: confusion, offense, outrage, tears, attack. She was choosing who to be right now. A sister? A victim? A seduced innocent? An insulted party?
"What are you talking about?"
"I saw it."
"Saw what?"
"How he looked around. How he checked that no one was nearby. How he took you by the elbow. How he kissed you. Quickly. Familiarly. That's not how you kiss someone for the first time, Lara."
She slowly lowered her gaze. To her bracelet. Too late.
"You misunderstood."
I laughed. Loudly. Ugly. Almost with a rasp.
"God, you're both so boring. He said the same thing. 'You don't understand the context.' Do you two share a dictionary for traitors?"
"Don't you dare."
"Don't I dare? Are you serious? You stood in my house, touched my husband, and then came to me with croissants?"
"I came to my sister."
"I don't have a sister anymore."
She flinched. That landed. Finally.
"Niki..."