Six
Harper
The kitchen is clean for the first time all week.
Not just “acceptable for visitors” clean, but the kind of clean where every surface smells faintly of citrus and the sunlight doesn’t get caught on a single crumb.
I’m on my second round of coffee for the morning, not because I need it but because the ritual makes sense in a world where nothing else does.
Leo is at school, the house is so quiet I can hear the fridge running three rooms away, and I’m padding around in the same jeans and oversized sweater I’ve been wearing for days.
There is nothing pressing on the to-do list. The laundry is done.
The paperwork for Clara is collated and sitting in a neat stack on the dining table, each page marked with sticky notes in my best block letters.
I’ve even pre-filled the return address labels on the next batch of envelopes, a task so far from urgent it almost feels like a dare to the universe.
I stand at the counter, waiting for the coffee to finish dripping, and scroll my phone without really seeing. My inbox is a graveyard of marketing emails and spam from companies I never remember patronizing. No new messages from Ethan, which is both a relief and a throat punch at the same time.
The next notification that pops up is from the Seabrook Community Facebook group, a holdover from when the only drama in my life was whether the new recycling bins would clash with the HOA-approved paint palette.
The notification preview reads, “Sandra commented on a post you’re tagged in,” and I feel a physical flinch in the middle of my chest.
I click the notification, already bracing for whatever neighbourhood faux pas that I have violated enough to be tagged in.
The post at the top of the feed is from Ethan.
He’s never used the group before. Didn’t even know he was a member of it.
The profile photo is a decade old, his hair still shaggy from when he thought he was rebelling against the corporate dress code.
The statement is short, but somehow also the longest thing I’ve read all month:
“Hi Seabrook friends. We wanted to share, with love and respect for our family, that Harper and I have decided to separate. This was a mutual decision, made after a lot of reflection. We’ve grown in different directions but remain dedicated to co-parenting Leo and supporting each other as friends.
Thank you for being such a wonderful community during this difficult time for both of us.
We appreciate your understanding as we navigate this next chapter. With gratitude, Ethan & Harper.”
The words detonate in my brain, but the explosion is slow and sour, the kind that leaves a ringing in your ears and a metallic taste on your tongue.
There are forty-three reactions already, most of them hearts or sad faces.
Seventeen comments in the two minutes since it posted.
Several of them from women who have eaten at my table, who have dropped off birthday cupcakes for Leo, who have texted me in the last week to check in and “see how you’re holding up.
” All of them are now typing, “thinking of you both, so brave” under Ethan’s version of events.
I reread the post, searching for evidence of myself in it.
My name is in the first line and the signature, but nowhere else.
I try to imagine what it would feel like to be one of those neighbours, scrolling past this, nodding in sad solidarity, believing that we were “growing in different directions” instead of detonated by one party’s explosive lapse in character.
The phrase “mutual decision” sits on my tongue like a sour candy.
I want to laugh, or maybe vomit. What the fuck was he thinking?
Why is he letting everyone into our business? This makes no sense.
My hand is shaking, just enough that the ceramic of the mug clicks faintly against the quartz.
I don’t want to read it again, but I do anyway.
This time, my thumb presses so hard into the screen that the device flexes in protest. I read the post a third time, my jaw squeezing tight, the white crescent of my thumbnail leaving a dent in my palm.
The coffee maker beeps. I don’t move.
A new notification pings, this time a text from Sandra. “Just saw Ethan’s post. You’re both handling this so gracefully. Let me know if you need anything.”
I stare at the word “gracefully.” It repeats in my head, echoing off the tile and the clean countertops and the nothingness of the empty house.
I imagine what it would look like to handle this ungracefully: post a selfie with the red panties, tag every woman who’s ever left a pie on my porch, type out the real story in all caps and see who still leaves a heart emoji under Ethan’s next performance.
Instead, I set the phone down. I pick up the coffee mug, then set it down again without drinking. The surface of the liquid vibrates, just for a second, then stills.
I clear my throat. The words come out low, almost polite.
“Fuck my life,” I say, and the honesty of it feels better than anything I’ve said all week.
I don’t call Liv because I want comfort. I call her because I want a witness, and maybe someone to talk me down from committing murder.
She answers on the second ring, her voice already a shade too alert, like she’s been pre-warned by the friend-sense that tracks disaster over cellular networks. “You alive, Harp?”
“I’m alive,” I say. “But you need to hear something.”
“Lay it on me.”
I don’t preamble. I just read the post, every line, every word, my voice doing that thing it does when I’m past the point of angry and straight into the kind of clarity that borders on clinical. I finish, and the silence is either from her planning a murder or… Nope, definitely planning a murder.
Liv finally says, with zero drama, “He used the word ‘mutual.’”
“He did,” I say. “And ‘difficult time for both of us.’”
She seems to need another minute. Then, “I am begging you to let me set his car on fire.”
I snort, but it’s not funny and it’s not a joke. “I don’t think I could scrape up the emotional energy to light a match.”
“You don’t have to. That’s what best friends are for. Also, I have a can of lighter fluid left from Luca’s ill-fated ‘backyard pizza oven’ project. I’ll be there in twenty.”
She hangs up. I put the phone down, face-down, and wait.
Liv arrives in fourteen, because she only lives two blocks away and has never observed a speed limit in her life.
She barrels through the front door without knocking, her bag slamming into the wall, her boots leaving a trail of dirt and dead grass across my just-cleaned floor.
She looks at me, then at the counter where the phone still sits, then at the coffee that has cooled almost solid in its mug.
“I brought reinforcements,” she says, and sets a box of donuts and a bottle of bottom-shelf whiskey next to my elbow. “Also, I already texted Adrian, so if we do end up burning anything, I have full legal protection.”
She perches on a kitchen stool, pulls out her own phone, and types with the kind of purpose you usually reserve for open-heart surgery.
“Pull it up for me,” she says. “I want to see the original. Don’t read it, just show me.”
I do. I hand over the phone with my thumb still stuck on the home button.
She reads every line, eyes narrow, her head tilting back and forth as if the words are optical illusions.
She doesn’t look at me while she does it.
She just scrolls, slow and methodical, her mouth moving on “with love and respect” line like she’s mulling it over.
When she hits the bottom, she scrolls through the comments.
She snorts at the first, a long cackle at the second, then shakes her head and sets the phone down.
She taps the screen, pointing at each phrase in turn.
“One: mutual decision. Two: both of us. Three: with love and respect. Four: difficult time. You realize what this is, right?”
“PR?”
“Confession by way of performance. He’s setting the stage so that, in six months, when people wonder why you’re not at the block party, it’s because you ‘never got over the divorce’ and not because you caught him dry-cleaning another woman’s underwear in your own house.
” She glances at me. “He’s casting himself as the co-victim. And he’s using Facebook to do it.”
I don’t answer right away. I stare at the mug, the way the rim is stained a perfect brown line, the way my own fingerprints are still visible in the glaze.
I remember, suddenly, buying the mug at a church rummage sale with Ethan, back before any of this mattered.
The memory is so pointless I almost laugh.
Liv leans forward, puts her elbows on the counter, and says, “Has he talked to you? Since posting this?”
“No. I got a text from Sandra. ‘You’re handling this so gracefully.’ Which is hilarious, considering that a week ago she tried to sell me on joining her essential oil pyramid scheme.”
Liv raises one eyebrow. “And yet, you still have not performed the modern social media ritual of ‘setting the record straight’ with a counter-post or at least a well-timed meme. Why?”
I want to say it’s because I don’t care. Or because I’m above it. But that’s not true, and she knows it.
“Because if I do,” I say, “I lose. He gets to call me petty. He gets to say I’m out for blood. And I get to be the bad guy who can’t ‘co-parent maturely’ in public.”
She thinks it over, then nods, slow and deliberate. “So, he got to go first.”
I flinch, just a little, at the way she says it. I wonder, fleetingly, if maybe she should be the one writing my books instead of me.
There’s a beat, then she leans back, stretches her arms over her head until her back cracks, and says, “We need a plan.”
“A plan,” I repeat, as if the word has lost all meaning.
“Yes. You cannot let him win the narrative before the ink on the lawyer letterhead is even dry. You’re a professional storyteller, Harper. Out-story him.”
It should be funny. It almost is. But all I can think of is the way he signed our names together, Ethan & Harper, like a family Christmas card or a couples’ baby shower announcement. The same way he signed every holiday card for a decade. As if I’m still an accessory to his life.
I notice the laptop sitting open on the counter behind us. My latest book draft glares at me, the unfinished sentence in the middle of the page like a dare: “She realized she had spent so long believing in the wrong version of the story that she no longer recognized the ending.”
Liv follows my gaze. “How close are you to deadline?” she asks, but her tone is less about work and more about whether I’m safe to leave alone with my own
“I’m supposed to have three new chapters in by Friday,” I say. “I haven’t even added to the file since the last time he texted me.”
She smiles, but it’s the kind that means “let me punch someone for you.” “Want me to finish it for you? I could ghostwrite a scene or two. You could even keep my name out of it, just like Ethan did with your life.”
It takes me a second to realize she’s joking. Or maybe not.
I shake my head. “It’s fine. I can do it.”
Liv’s expression softens, just for a second. “You know you don’t have to pretend you’re fine, right? That’s not a requirement for survival.”
“I’m not pretending.”
She gives me a look.
“I’m not,” I say, quieter. “I’m just… tired.”
“Yeah. That’s how they win.” She shoves the donuts toward me. “Eat. Sugar is the only thing in this world that can be trusted.”
I take a donut. It’s vanilla-glazed, my least favourite, but I eat it anyway, chewing slowly, like if I keep doing it long enough I’ll eventually get full.
Liv picks up the phone again, scrolls through the comments, then sets it down. “You want to know what’s weird?”
“What?”
“There’s not a single mention of the word ‘sorry’ in that entire statement. Not even once. Not even implied. It’s all just, ‘This is the way it is. Please love us anyway.’ He’s not even sorry, Harp. He’s just getting ahead of the apology tour.”
I want to argue, but she’s right. The word “sorry” isn’t there. The only word that matters is “mutual,” and it’s been weaponized.
We sit in the silence for a long time, the only noise the faint ticking of the wall clock and the occasional car passing outside. It should be awkward, but it isn’t. There’s something safe about Liv’s presence, even when she’s practically vibrating with the need to commit a felony.
Eventually, she says, “Do you want to go full nuclear? Or do you want to wait and see what he does next?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “What would you do?”
“I’d set the car on fire and post a boomerang of it to the Seabrook group. But I don’t have a child in the house to protect. So we’ll play it your way.”
I finish the donut, lick the sugar off my fingers, and wrap both hands around the mug, even though the coffee has gone cold and bitter.
I stare at the table, the wood grain worn smooth from a decade of elbows and homework and late-night manuscript edits.
This was the table where Leo learned to read.
Where Ethan asked me to marry him, technically, after a bottle of cheap wine and a takeout pizza.
Where I told him I was pregnant. Where I, apparently, lost the ability to distinguish between a real marriage and a well-rehearsed cover story.
I don’t cry. But the pressure behind my eyes is so strong that it’s almost overwhelming.
Liv clears her throat. “You’re not alone, you know. No matter how much he tries to say it was ‘mutual.’”
I nod, still staring at the table. “I know.”
She lets the silence fill the room, and for the first time since I read the post, I feel something other than weight in my chest. It’s the knowledge that there’s at least one person willing to set a car on fire for me, and that’s worth something.
The clock ticks. Outside, a mail truck stops at the curb, deposits the day’s bills and offers, and moves on.
Inside, Liv sits at my table, scrolling through Facebook while I stare at my own hands, at the ghost of a donut glaze on my skin and realize that no matter how hard Ethan tries to make me the villain, there are still people willing to hear my side.
I sit at my own kitchen table, in my own house, in the life I built from scratch, and I realize that Ethan has already begun the work of making me the difficult one. And, for now at least, the world is already believing him.
But not Liv. And maybe, that's the start I need to stop others from buying into his bullshit.