Chapter 8
I walked out of the kitchen with the notebook in my hand and for the first time in eight years did not look back to check what face Damien was wearing.
Before, I would have. Before, it mattered to me: was he angry, tired, softening, feeling sorry, about to follow, or had he already filed me away in his internal reports as "unstable.
" Before, I could live by his expression the way you live by the weather.
When Damien's eyes darkened, the house went cold.
When he went silent, I began speaking more quietly.
When his gaze lingered on my waist, I skipped dinner.
It was no longer love—it was conditioning, only I'd named the collar "marriage" because that was less shameful.
Now I walked down the hall without the ring, with a bandaged palm, with dry eyes and a strange feeling as if my skin had been peeled off and underneath was not weakness, as I'd feared, but raw, angry flesh. Alive. Hurting. Mine.
In the notebook were only five lines: "Children.
Documents. Money. Work. Body." I'd stared at them all night while Damien was presumably lying in his study thinking I was crying again.
I hadn't cried. Crying was too late for that.
Tears didn't restore your access to bank accounts, didn't explain where the deed to the house was filed, didn't erase a stranger's kiss from the recording, didn't make your own sister family again.
I didn't need tears. I needed a list. The list was pathetic, almost childish, but it was the first document in my life that I'd made not for the house, not for the children, not for Damien. For myself.
"Mom!" Marta ran out of the nursery already in tights but no skirt. "I don't want the blue one. It's scratchy."
"Then the green one."
"The green one's for Wednesday."
"Today is a personal Wednesday."
She considered this seriously, then nodded. At four, you could still accept a new reality if you named it with enough confidence. Tim came out next, backpack in hand, wearing the expression I hated seeing on a child's face: he was preemptively bracing for tension.
"Is Daddy driving?" he asked.
"No. I am."
"Does he know?"
"Yes."
"Did he say it was okay?"
I froze. Just like that. With one question, my child had shown me my own portrait. Not "Mom decided." Not "Mom can." Mom needs permission.
"Tim," I said quietly, "I don't need permission to drive you to school."
He shrugged, but I could tell he'd heard. Marta, of course, heard something else.
"Is Daddy coming with us?"
"Not today."
"Is he sad?"
God. Even she already felt it. She just named it more gently.
"Probably."
"Because the cups died?"
I nearly laughed. What came out was a hiccup.
"Because of the cups too."
Damien appeared at the top of the stairs in a dark turtleneck, hair still wet from the shower, looking like a man who hadn't slept but had forced himself to appear collected anyway.
Marta immediately ran to him. He caught her the way he always did—easily, correctly, as if yesterday's kitchen had never happened, as if the hands holding his daughter weren't the same ones that had held me among the shards.
"A princess without a skirt," he said. "New dress code?"
"Personal Wednesday."
"Understood. Respect."
She giggled and burrowed into his neck. Tim stayed beside me.
Not demonstratively. He just stayed. Damien noticed.
Of course he noticed. His gaze dropped to his son, then returned to me.
And for the first time I didn't smooth the situation over, didn't say "Go to Daddy," didn't smile at Damien to spare his feelings.
I refused to do their repair work for a thing I hadn't broken.
"I'll drive the kids," Damien said.
"No."
"Niki, your hand. And you barely slept."
"I already said this morning. I'm driving."
"This isn't a competition for the steering wheel."
"Then don't compete."
He slowly set Marta down.
"Can we skip this in front of the children?"
"We can. So right now you'll say 'have a good day' to them, instead of explaining why Mommy can't handle the car."
His eyes narrowed slightly.
"I wasn't going to say you can't handle it."
"Great. Then we've both saved time."
Marta looked from me to him and back.
"Are you fighting again?"
Damien crouched before her.
"No. We're negotiating. Not very gracefully, but we're trying."
"It should be graceful."
"Agreed."
He kissed her forehead, then extended his hand to Tim. Not a hug—just an open palm. Tim looked at it, hesitated, then gave him five. No hug. No smile. But he didn't turn away. Damien accepted even that, though I could see it cost him.
In the car, the children were quiet. Marta quickly got distracted by a song from her cartoon, and Tim stared out the window.
I drove carefully, my fingers aching on the wheel, the bandage getting in the way, but inside me a fierce satisfaction was growing: I was driving.
Myself. Not the driver, not Damien, not his schedule. Just me.
"Mom," Tim said at the school when Marta had already dozed off in her car seat during the ten-minute ride. "If Daddy did something bad, why do we live at home?"
I turned off the engine.
"Because home isn't just Daddy."
"Whose is it?"
The question landed squarely on one of the notebook's lines: documents.
"Ours," I said, and immediately realized I didn't know if that was true.
Tim looked at me.
He nodded as if it were a perfectly normal adult answer. Then opened the door.
"I don't want Daddy picking me up today."
"Okay."
"Will you tell him I'm sick?"
"No. I'll tell him you want me to pick you up."
"He'll be upset."
"That's his grown-up problem. Not yours."
Tim got out, then suddenly came back, hugged me around the neck, and ran off toward school before I could start crying.
But I cried anyway. Not loudly. Not prettily.
I just sat in the parking lot, gripping the wheel with my good hand, and wept so that Marta wouldn't wake up.
For the fact that my son had to worry about whether his father would be upset.
For the fact that I'd spent eight years teaching the children to read Damien's mood without even noticing I was teaching.
After daycare I didn't drive home. At first I meant to.
Automatically. As always. Home, kitchen, laundry, grocery list, mending Tim's uniform, paying for Marta's art class.
But at the red light I looked at my hand without the ring and turned toward the old business district, where I'd once worked as an interior designer—before I became "Damien Grayson's wife" full time.
I found Ira's number in my phone—a former colleague.
My finger hovered over the call button so long the screen went dark.
I was afraid not of rejection. I was afraid they'd say "of course"—and then I'd have to admit: life without Damien was not a void but a territory where I'd have to plant my own feet.
Ira picked up on the second ring.
"Niki? Are you even alive?"
"More or less."
"My God. I thought you'd changed your number and your country."
"Just my face."
She paused.
"You sound rough."
"And I look worse."
"Come over. I'm at the office."
"I'm already downstairs."
"Well, well. Get up here, mystery woman."
Ten minutes later I was sitting in her small office surrounded by fabric samples, tile catalogs, and the smell of coffee. Ira was five years older than me, short-haired, sharp, with the eyes of someone who was used to spotting where the client's money was and where their taste had died in agony.
"So," she said, sizing me up. "Husband?"
I smirked.
"Why always the husband?"
"Because women with that face are either getting divorced or buying a white sofa out of spite. You're not in the mood for a sofa."
"He cheated on me."
Ira didn't gasp. Didn't clutch her chest. She just poured me coffee and pushed the napkins closer.
"With whom?"
I looked at her.
"With... my sister."
God, how awful it sounded.
Now she did swear. Quietly, with feeling, but without theatrics.
"Sorry."
"It wasn't you."
"Sorry anyway. On behalf of the female half of humanity."
I laughed and cried at the same time. Ira waited. Didn't stroke me, didn't say "hang in there," didn't bombard me with advice. She just sat beside me, and for the first time in days it became slightly easier. Not good. Good no longer existed. But easier.
"I need work," I said. "Not pity. Not 'later.' Not 'take some rest.' Work."
"You've been out of the market for almost eight years."
"I know."
"Your portfolio's outdated."
"I know."
"The schedule will be insane."
"I have two kids and a Special Forces husband with a mistress-slash-sister. An insane schedule won't scare me."
Ira smiled for the first time.
"Now that's better. There's a project. A small restaurant. Not glamorous, but real money. I can give you a piece: floor plan, mood boards, lighting design. Can you handle it?"
I wanted to say "I'll try." Then I remembered Tim and Damien.
"I'll do it."
"The money's not huge."
"Will it be mine?"
"Yours."
One word, and it hit me all over again. Mine. Not allocated. Not permitted. Not "take the card, buy yourself something, just don't make that face." Mine.
When I got home, Damien's car was at the gate.
He was inside. The foyer smelled of coffee and something sweet.
In the kitchen, Marta was drawing. Tim was pretending to do homework.
And Damien stood at the stove making cheese pancakes.
Cheese pancakes. He hadn't made them in five years—not since the time he'd burned the first batch and declared it "not his area. ""
"Mom!" Marta raised her head. "Daddy's making breakfast for dinner!"
"I see."
Damien looked at me.
"The kids asked."
Tim didn't raise his eyes.
"I didn't ask."
The silence went thin.
"Marta asked," Damien corrected calmly. "I made enough for everyone."
"Thank you," I said to the children, not to him. "I'm not hungry."
"You haven't eaten since morning," Damien said.
"Are you tracking my meals now out of guilt or out of your old habit of monitoring my weight?"
Marta stopped drawing.