Chapter 6
Marta stood in the kitchen doorway in her pink jacket, stuffed bunny under her arm, staring at the blood on my palm as if she'd seen not a cut but the end of the world.
Behind her, Tim had frozen. Pale, too straight, backpack on one shoulder.
Sarah was whispering something—apologizing, I think, saying something about rain, about the park getting cold, about not knowing, not thinking—but I could barely hear her.
The whole kitchen was still ringing from the broken dishes.
Shards lay on the floor like small white bones.
Damien stood beside me, and his face had changed for the first time in all these days—not from anger or irritation.
From impact. Marta had asked, "Did Daddy punish you?
"—and with that one child's word she'd done to us what neither my screaming, nor Lara's filth, nor his confession had managed. She'd stopped the war.
"No," Damien said first.
His voice was different now. Not commanding, not cold. Hollow.
"Marta, come here."
"No," she breathed, pressing the bunny to her chest.
I saw Damien's jaw twitch. A small movement, but I knew him too well. It hurt him. Not because of me. Because of her. And because of that, it hurt me even more.
"Sweetie, Daddy didn't punish me," I said, trying to keep my voice steady, but it still trembled and scraped my throat. "I broke a cup and cut myself. That's all."
Tim looked at the floor.
"A lot of cups."
Damien's gaze snapped to him, but he held back. I saw him literally swallow the habitual command. Not now. Not in front of the children. This was something we'd both understood in the same second, and perhaps for the first time in many hours we were on the same side—at least in this.
"I was angry," I told my son. "Very angry. But it's grown-up anger. Not yours."
"At Daddy?" Tim asked.
Sarah closed her eyes. Damien didn't move.
I exhaled. There it was—the line. Say too much and you'd strike the child harder than the husband. Stay silent and you'd teach him to trust only pretty decorations. I crouched in front of Tim, though my palm burned and my knees shook.
"Daddy and I had a fight. A bad one. But you and Marta have nothing to do with it. Daddy loves you. I love you. That doesn't change, even when grown-ups behave badly."
Tim looked at Damien.
"You didn't hit Mom?"
Damien went so pale so fast that it frightened me. Not for him. For the fact that our son had ever needed to ask that question at all.
"No," Damien said. "Never."
"Then why the blood?"
"I cut myself," I said. "Really."
"Because of Daddy?"
I didn't have time to answer.
"Because of me," Damien said.
I lifted my eyes to him. He was looking at Tim directly, without evasion, and something in my chest clenched painfully.
"I made Mom very angry. She shouldn't have smashed the dishes, but I was wrong too. Do you understand?"
Tim was silent.
"Do you understand?" Damien repeated, softer now.
"I understand."
"Good. Sarah's going to take you upstairs now. You'll change, and I'll clean up the glass."
"I want to stay with Mommy," Marta said.
"Mommy's hand needs help," he said.
"I'll help her myself."
Marta took a step toward me, but a shard crunched under her foot on the floor. Damien lurched forward; so did I. We both said at once:
"Stop!"
Our daughter burst into tears immediately.
Loudly, indignantly, fearfully. I lunged for her, but Damien was faster: he scooped Marta up, stepped over the shards, and carried her out of the kitchen.
At first she pushed her small palm against his chest, then grabbed onto his neck and wailed even harder.
Damien closed his eyes for a second. Just a second.
I saw his hand settle on the back of her head—gently, carefully, as if on the most fragile thing he possessed.
"Shh, princess. I'm here. Mommy's here."
Sarah sniffled. Tim watched his father with distrust, but not as harshly as before.
"I don't want to go upstairs," he said.
"Then stand by the door," Damien answered. "But don't come into the kitchen. There's glass."
"I'm not little."
"I know. That's why I'm asking, not carrying."
That worked. Tim stayed by the doorway. Sarah took Marta, but she kept reaching for me, and I smiled at her as if I didn't have a gutted chest inside.
"I'll be right there, mouse. I promise."
When the children were gone, the kitchen became even more frightening. Not because of the shards. Because now we both knew: they'd seen. Not all of it, but enough. Children always need just a crumb to taste the whole loaf.
Damien took the first-aid kit from the upper cabinet. Silently. Then came to me.
"Give me your hand."
"I can do it myself."
"Niki, there's glass in your palm. Don't turn wound care into a political statement."
"And don't turn concern into proof that you're a good person."
He held his gaze on my face.
"I'm not trying to prove I'm good right now. I just don't want you to get an infection. Can you grasp the difference?"
"I can. I almost even said thank you."
"Don't bother. I'll survive without gratitude."
He took my hand. I wanted to pull away, but the shard was really deeper than I'd thought. Damien cleaned the cut confidently, quickly, neatly. The iodine stung so badly I clenched my teeth.
"Hurt?"
"Don't start."
"I asked about the hand."
"And I answered about everything else."
He said nothing. And this silence wasn't victorious or cold. It was heavy. As if he'd realized that any sentence right now could become another shard.
"The children can't see things like that," he said at last.
I raised my head.
"Seriously? That's your main takeaway?"
"My main takeaway I'm keeping to myself for now, because if I say it right now we'll blow up again. And the children are upstairs."
"Convenient. Now the children are a shield?"
"No. Now the children are the reason for us both to shut up in time. For me too, if you need to hear that out loud."
That was unexpected. Not an apology—no. He was still a lifetime away from an apology. But not the usual "you're being hysterical." Not an order. I was even thrown off for a second, and he didn't exploit it. He just finished wrapping the bandage.
"I won't turn them against you," I said.
Damien froze.
"I know."
"You don't. You think I'm going to take revenge. That I'll tell Tim what you are. That I'll forbid Marta from running to you. That I'll turn the children into judges. I won't. They love you. And I won't cause them pain just because you caused it to me."
He finished bandaging and didn't let go of my hand right away.
"That's fair."
"It's not for you."
"I understand."
"No, you don't. If you understood, you wouldn't have told me an hour ago that I'm a danger to the children."
He looked away.
"I went too far."
I smirked.
"Wow."
"Don't celebrate. It's not a surrender."
"I noticed. Your face isn't right for a surrender."
"Neither is the situation."
"And what is it?"
He looked at the shards, at the smashed cup on the wall, at my bandaged hand.
"One where I've done enough for you to have every right to hate me. But not enough for me to calmly watch you walk into a state where you're smashing dishes in front of the children."
"They weren't supposed to come back."
"But they did. Life rarely asks if we're ready to look decent."
I was tired. Suddenly, to the point of nausea. Not just from the screaming. From him. From myself. From the fact that even now he was speaking reasonably, and part of me—the idiotic, exhausted part—still wanted to grab his reason like a handrail.
"From this moment on, I'm not sharing a bed with you."
He raised his eyes. And that got to him. Not the screaming, not the broken cups, not my blood. The bed. The place he considered his as naturally as the house, the surname, and my silence. His face didn't change much, but I saw: the blow landed where I'd aimed.
"Don't make decisions like that on emotion."
"I'm not asking permission."
"And I won't let you turn our home into a dormitory with performative doors and punishments."
"Punishments?" I smirked, and the smirk made even me feel sick. "Damien, I'm not your nanny. I'm not putting you in a corner. The thought of you lying next to me makes me nauseous. That's the whole pedagogy."
He straightened slowly.
"Choose your words."
"Why? So they're easier for you to hear? You didn't choose yours for months when you were undressing my sister."
"Don't talk about it like that."
"Like what? More gently? More cleanly? 'My husband shared intimacy with my own sister while I was picking out the children's pajamas'? Is that better?"
"Niki, enough."
"No. That word is mine now. No, Damien. Don't touch me. Don't come into my room. Don't lie down beside me. Don't you dare pretend we just had a fight and tonight we'll go to our separate corners, and in the morning we'll have coffee."
"I wasn't going to pretend."
"That's all you ever do. You pretend the affair was a mistake. That Lara isn't the cause. That I'm being hysterical. That the children won't feel a thing. That the house is whole if you clean up the shards fast enough."
He ran his hand over his face. Exhaustion for a second cut through his hardness, but it no longer moved me. Let him be tired. Let him for once be tired of his own shit, not my pain.
"You'll stay in the bedroom," he said more quietly. "I'll sleep in the study."
"How generous."
"It's not generosity. It's an attempt not to push you to the point where tomorrow you collapse in front of the children."
"Don't hide behind the children. I saw today how well you can do that. It's convincing, but revolting."
His gaze grew heavy.
"I'm not hiding behind them. I'm thinking about them. And yes, right now you don't want to hear that, because it's easier to hate me completely. But I won't let this story devour Tim and Marta just because we failed as adults."
"'We'?" I stepped toward him. "Don't you dare split your affair in two. I wasn't holding your hand when you walked to Lara."
"I wasn't talking about the affair."
"And I was. Because now everything is about it."
"No. Not everything."
"For me—everything."