Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
By noon, Abby had canceled two wedding appointments and postponed a third. The florist had accepted her vague reference to a family emergency, but the dress boutique required forty-eight hours’ notice and charged her card for the missed fitting. The dress itself was non-refundable.
The alert appeared while she sat at Sadie’s kitchen table making a list of everything she needed from the apartment. Abby stared at the charge and remembered Makayla promising to bring champagne to the fitting.
“I have to go to the apartment today,” she said as she turned the phone facedown. “If I wait, Hudson will move things or decide I’m not allowed inside without him.”
Sadie looked up from the legal pad between them. She had divided the page into categories—clothes, documents, medication, electronics—and left half the sheet blank for items Abby would remember once she saw them.
“We can ask for a police escort,” Sadie said as she capped her pen. “Or we can hire movers and send him notice.”
“I’m still on the lease.” Abby rubbed at the pale band around her ring finger. “I have every right to go into my own apartment.”
“Having the right won’t stop Hudson from making it difficult.” Sadie tapped the pen against the legal pad. “He has never needed a legal basis to be an ass.”
Abby knew that. She also knew that arriving with police would make the separation feel like a public emergency when some stubborn part of her still thought she was going home to collect clothes after an argument.
“He has meetings all afternoon,” she said as she reached for her coffee.
“He told me yesterday that his father expected him at the office until at least six. I can’t even imagine the mess he’s in if he actually had a meeting with the merger lawyers this morning…
” But, as she said it, she realized that must have been a lie to facilitate his assignation with Makayla.
The ease with which she recalled Hudson’s schedule brought a wave of nausea. She had spent years organizing her days around the information he offered, never considering how often that information might have been designed to place her somewhere convenient.
Sadie followed the change in her face. “What did you remember?”
“Nothing new.” Abby tried to drink, but the coffee had gone cold. “I’m starting to wonder whether anything he told me about his schedule was true.”
“We’ll be in and out before six.” Sadie drew a line beneath the list. “We take what you need for the next few weeks, and we arrange the rest after you have somewhere permanent.”
The phrase somewhere permanent opened another space Abby had not yet allowed herself to examine.
Sadie’s guest room could hold her for a while, but Abby would eventually need an apartment, furniture, and a new route to work.
Hudson had not merely occupied her home; he had been built into every practical decision she made for nearly a decade.
She had gone from living with her parents, to living in a dorm, to living with Hudson, and no stops in-between.
“I don’t know what belongs to me anymore,” she admitted. “We bought almost everything together.”
“Then today we take the things that belonged to you before him.” Sadie stood and carried both mugs to the sink. “You can divide the rest when looking at it doesn’t make you sick. We’ll make note of what you want.”
The rain had stopped, leaving the city washed pale beneath a low ceiling of clouds. Sadie drove because Abby’s car remained in the apartment garage, and neither of them spoke during the final blocks.
Abby expected the building to look altered. Instead, the brass numbers beside the entrance reflected the afternoon light, and someone had propped the lobby door open while carrying in groceries.
The doorman smiled when he recognized her. “Afternoon, Ms. Kendrik. Mr. Covington left about an hour ago, but said I should call him when you arrived.”
“No, please don’t.” Abby held her key fob against the interior door and waited for the lock to release. “I won’t be here long.”
The lie tasted familiar. She had learned from Hudson that vague truths passed more easily when delivered without apology.
Sadie waited until the elevator doors closed. “He left an hour ago. That gives us some time.”
Abby nodded, though the information produced no relief. Hudson had returned to the apartment after leaving Sadie’s house, which meant he had carried the roses and the ring back into the rooms where Abby’s belongings still waited.
The apartment smelled faintly of his cologne when she opened the door. Hudson’s charcoal coat lay across the back of the sofa, and the white roses had been dropped in the kitchen sink without water.
The engagement ring rested on the counter beside them. Hudson had placed it upright against the ribbon as though arranging it for her to find.
Sadie stopped behind Abby. “Do you want me to put it somewhere you can’t see it?”
“Leave it.” Abby set her purse on the entry table and looked around the living room. “It’s his problem now.”
The wedding place card samples remained on the coffee table. One had been opened and flattened beneath Hudson’s water glass, leaving a dark ring across both their names.
Abby picked it up before she could stop herself.
The paper had taken weeks to choose because Hudson disliked anything too soft and Abby wanted something warmer than the black lettering he preferred.
The compromise had been cream cardstock with a narrow gray border, elegant enough for the Covingtons and gentle enough to feel like her.
“Do you want those?” Sadie asked as she unfolded two cardboard boxes.
“I don’t know.” Abby traced the water stain with her thumb. “I spent six hundred dollars on paper that was supposed to tell people where to sit and watch me make the worst decision of my life.”
“Then we don’t give it space in the car.” Sadie held out a trash bag but waited for Abby to decide.
Abby placed the cards inside. The remaining samples followed, each landing with a soft, expensive weight.
They began in the bedroom. Abby opened the closet and found Hudson’s suits arranged along one side, her clothes along the other, divided by a garment bag containing her rehearsal-dinner dress.
Makayla had chosen the dress. She had dismissed Abby’s first two options as too conservative and persuaded her to buy something more daring. Something Hudson would notice., she’d said.
Abby pulled the garment bag from the rail and laid it across the bed. “She stood in this room and told me I needed to remind him how lucky he was.”
Sadie unfolded a box beside the dresser. “Do you want to keep it?”
“It’s a beautiful dress.” Abby stared at the pale blue silk visible through the plastic. “I hate that I can hear her voice when I look at it.”
“Then we pack it without deciding.” Sadie opened the box wider. “You can hate it somewhere else.”
The practical answer allowed Abby to move. She packed work clothes, underwear, shoes, and the sweaters her grandmother had made before arthritis forced her to stop knitting. Sadie emptied the bathroom cabinet and placed Abby’s toiletries into shopping bags.
The repetition became almost calming. Fold, wrap, label, close. Each box reduced the number of reasons Abby would have to return.
She was clearing the drawer beside the bed when she found the hotel pen. It had rolled beneath a packet of tissues and a charging cable, its green barrel stamped with the Harrington Hotel name.
Abby held it beneath the lamp. The hotel used the same dark green leaf design she had seen on the bedspread in the photograph.
“Sadie.” Her sister looked up from the closet, and Abby extended the pen toward her. “He brought this home.”
Sadie took it by the end and read the lettering. “That’s a hotel he went to with her?”
“Yes.” Abby sat on the edge of the bed. “I’ve cleaned this drawer. I must have picked it up and put it back without looking at it.”
“You had no reason to study a pen.” Sadie placed one hand on Abby’s shoulder. “Finding it now doesn’t mean you failed to notice something obvious.”
“He left it beside our bed.” Abby pictured Hudson unpacking after one of his supposed business trips, dropping the pen among the ordinary debris of their shared life. “He didn’t even worry I would recognize it.”
Sadie placed the pen on the nightstand. “Maybe he enjoyed knowing you wouldn’t question him.”
The suggestion should have sounded cruel, but it aligned with the messages Abby had read. She always believes you. That’s why this works.
Abby opened the bottom drawer because sitting still had become unbearable. Beneath a stack of old magazines, she found an envelope from a jewelry store she had never visited.
The receipt inside was dated six months earlier. Hudson had purchased a diamond bracelet three days before Makayla wore one to dinner.
Sadie read the total and released a slow breath. “Hudson spent eleven thousand dollars on it.”
“Makayla told me a few days later that Evan bought it after closing a funding round.” Abby covered her mouth as the memory continued. “I told her she should stop complaining about his work if she was willing to enjoy what it paid for.”
Shame moved through her before she could resist it. Makayla had let Abby defend Evan for a gift he had never purchased, then accepted comfort when the lie made her appear neglected.
“I owe him an apology,” Abby said as she looked at the receipt again. “I helped her make him guilty for something he never did.”
“You believed what his fiancée told you.” Sadie placed the receipt beside the hotel pen. “He probably never knew.”
“I probably never knew Hudson’s lies about me either.” Abby looked toward the closet where her life had been divided neatly from his. “Intent doesn’t erase what it did.”
She photographed the receipt and sent it to Evan with a brief explanation. The message showed as delivered, but he did not answer immediately.