Chapter 6 Olivia
Olivia
"Ryan? Are you there?"
Her voice was soft and uncertain.
Young, I thought. Or maybe just scared. She sounded like she expected to be disappointed.
I tried to speak but my throat had locked up. No sound came out. Just my breathing, harsh and uneven in the silence of the kitchen.
"Ryan?" she said again, and this time there was an edge of worry in it. "Please say something."
I should have hung up. Should have ended the call right then. But I couldn't move. Couldn't think. I just stood there with the phone pressed to my ear, listening to this stranger say my husband's name like she had the right to.
"I don't understand," she said, and her voice cracked.
"You said we needed to talk, and then...
nothing. You haven't answered any of my calls.
I've been going out of my mind. Did something happen?
Are you—" She paused, and I could hear her trying to steady herself.
"Please, Ryan. Just tell me you're okay. "
He'd told her they needed to talk.
And then he'd died before he could.
Unbidden, the memories flooded in. Ryan making coffee on Sunday mornings, humming off-key while he waited for the pot to brew.
The way he'd leave Post-it notes on the bathroom mirror when he left early for work—stupid jokes, little reminders that he loved me.
How he'd pull me close on the couch at night, his arm heavy across my shoulders, and I'd fall asleep feeling safe.
Our third anniversary. We'd driven up to the White Mountains, rented a cabin with no cell service and a fireplace that actually worked.
It had snowed the whole weekend, and we'd stayed inside, drinking wine and playing cards and talking about the house we'd buy someday, the trips we'd take.
On the last night, he'd pulled me onto his lap in front of the fire and told me he couldn't imagine loving anyone the way he loved me. That I was it for him. Forever.
I'd believed him.
God, I'd believed every word.
I buried that man days ago. Stood at his grave and watched them lower him into frozen ground. The man I thought I'd spend my life with. The man I thought I knew.
"Ryan, please."
The woman's voice broke, cracking on his name, and the sound of it—the desperation, the intimacy—shattered whatever was left holding me together.
I pulled the phone away from my ear slowly, like I was moving underwater. The woman's voice faded to a distant murmur, drowned out by the sound of my own heart hammering in my chest. I stared at the screen—the unknown number, the call timer still ticking forward.
My thumb found the red icon and pressed it.
The line went dead. The phone slipped from my hand and clattered against the counter.
I couldn't breathe.
The kitchen tilted sideways and I grabbed the edge of the sink, trying to anchor myself, but my lungs wouldn't work. I sucked in air but it wouldn't go down, wouldn't reach. My chest felt tight and wrong.
The thought hovered at the edge of my mind, the one I'd been running from all night. The one I'd torn the house apart trying to disprove.
I forced myself to think it. To hold the words clearly in my head even though it felt like swallowing glass.
Ryan had been cheating on me.
The thought kept repeating, looping, but I couldn't make it feel real.
It was too big. Too incomprehensible. This was Ryan—Ryan who brought me coffee in bed on Saturdays, who remembered my mother's birthday, who cried at the end of It's a Wonderful Life every Christmas.
Ryan who kissed my forehead before he left for work and texted me halfway through the day just to say he was thinking of me.
That Ryan didn't cheat.
Except he did.
And he'd texted Ben ‘this ends tonight’. Which could mean he was going to end it, that he was doing the right thing. Or… it could mean something else entirely. I didn't know. I didn't know anything anymore.
I should have been angry. Or crushed. But I wasn't. There was just this feeling—this shapeless, colorless weight that sat on my chest and pressed down. A heavy fog of confusion that made my ribs feel too tight around my heart, like my own body was closing in on itself.
I slid down to the floor, my back against the cabinets, gasping for air that wouldn't come. The edges of my vision were going dark and fuzzy, and somewhere in the back of my mind I knew I was having a panic attack, but knowing didn't help. Nothing helped.
The phone buzzed again.
I stared at it from the floor, three feet away on the counter, the screen lighting up. It was the same number. She was calling back.
I watched the phone spin on the counter, unable to move, unable to think. It vibrated against the granite like something alive and angry.
And then it stopped.
The kitchen went silent again except for my ragged breathing.
I closed my eyes and pressed my face against my knees, trying to slow my heart, trying to breathe, trying to remember how to exist in a world where my husband had been driving to another woman when he died.
And she still didn't know he was gone.