Chapter 10 Only the First Day
RAFAEL
The drive back from the Castille estate takes only a few minutes. I don't remember any of it.
I park in front of the main house and sit there with the engine off, staring at the door I've walked through a thousand times.
Sera's words keep replaying in my head, each one landing harder than the last. I'm done being the surest thing you never had to try for.
I grip the steering wheel until my knuckles ache, then force myself to let go.
She called a lawyer. She's filing for divorce. And when I told her I loved her, she said she loved me while she packed.
I get out of the car because I can't sit here anymore. The evening air is warm and smells like citrus blossoms from the groves, the same smell that's surrounded me my whole life. I used to find it comforting. Now it just reminds me of everything I'm losing.
The house is quiet when I step inside. No music from the kitchen, no footsteps on the stairs, no voice calling out to ask if I want coffee. I've been coming home to this silence since Friday morning, but tonight it feels different. Tonight I know she's not coming back on her own.
I walk through the front hall and stop at the bottom of the stairs. Our bedroom is up there. Our bed, the window she likes to open in the morning, the wardrobe where her clothes used to hang beside mine.
I should go up there. I should face what's left.
Instead I turn toward the east wing, toward the workshop she set up with my help just days before everything fell apart.
The door is closed but not locked. I push it open and stand in the doorway, looking at the space she built.
Her extraction setup is still here, the glass vessels and copper tubing that I helped her carry from storage.
The precision scales sit on the workbench beside a row of empty bottles, waiting for blends she hasn't made.
The equipment is still where we put it the Saturday before our anniversary, in the careful order she brings to all her work.
I step inside and close the door behind me.
The room smells like her.
Neroli and orange blossom, the signature blend she wears every day, the scent I stopped noticing somewhere in the chaos of the past months. I breathe it in now and feel something crack open in my chest.
How long has it been since I really looked at her? Since I paid attention to the way she moved through our house, the sound of her voice, the particular way she laughed when I said something that surprised her?
On Saturday she laughed when we finally got the equipment into place. I remember that perfectly. She stood back to inspect it, pleased with herself and with me. I'd wanted to give her more afternoons like that. How had I managed to treat one good day as permission to miss the next?
There's a photograph tucked into the corner of her mirror, held in place by the frame. I cross the room to look at it.
It's from our wedding, the two of us standing under the lemon trees with our families around us. Sera is laughing at something I said, her head tilted back, her hand on my arm. I'm looking at her like she's the only person in the world.
When did I stop looking at her like that?
I pull the photograph free and hold it closer. We looked so certain that wanting each other would carry us through whatever came next. I remember thinking I was the luckiest man alive, that I'd married my best friend, that nothing could ever come between us.
I was an idiot. Not because I believed those things, but because I stopped acting like they were true.
I put the photograph back and leave the workshop, pulling the door closed behind me. The hallway stretches toward the main part of the house, toward the kitchen and the dining room and all the spaces where I should have been present and wasn't.
The dining room door is open. I stop in the doorway and look at the table where she waited for me on our anniversary.
Someone has cleared it since Thursday night. The candles are gone, the dishes put away, the white cloth removed. But I can still see it the way my mother described it: Sera in her blue dress, the meal she'd cooked growing cold, the wedding wine she'd meant to open still down in the cellar.
I pull out the chair opposite hers. There's a mark near its back leg from the afternoon we moved this table in, arguing cheerfully about whether it was too large. She wanted room for people. I wanted whatever made her keep smiling like that.
I sit without touching the table. I can't bear the idea of settling comfortably into the place I left empty.
Footsteps in the hallway. I straighten up and turn to find my mother standing in the doorway, her expression unreadable.
"You're back." She doesn't move to embrace me or offer comfort. She just stands there, watching me with eyes that see too much. "How did it go?"
"She's filing for divorce." The words taste like ash in my mouth. "She told me at the gate. Her father wouldn't let me inside."
"Did you expect him to?" My mother crosses her arms over her chest, and I recognize the gesture. It's the same one Sera used when she told me she was done. "After what you've put her through?"
"I expected..." I don't know what I expected. A chance to explain, maybe. A conversation that wasn't conducted through iron bars. "I thought if I could just talk to her, I could make her understand."
"Understand what?" My mother's voice is sharp, sharper than I've heard it in years.
"That you missed your anniversary dinner because work was more important?
That you've been spending more time with your branding consultant than with your wife?
That she had to hear about your problems from Marisol instead of from you? "
"That's not fair." The protest sounds weak even to my own ears. "The estate was in crisis. I was trying to keep everything from falling apart."
"And in the process, you let your marriage fall apart instead.
" My mother moves into the room, stopping beside the table where Sera waited alone.
"I sat with her that night, Rafael. I watched her try to pretend she wasn't devastated.
She'd cooked three courses. She was wearing that blue dress you like.
And you couldn't even call to tell her you'd be late. "
The image hits me like a physical blow. Sera in her blue dress, her signature scent, sitting at this table with food she'd made for me while I...
what? Before I became too ill to follow a conversation, I'd had a phone on my desk and a wife expecting me at seven.
Whatever I can't remember later, I know I let that hour pass.
"I don't remember deciding to stay." The admission sounds pitiful with the empty place opposite me. "I remember feeling ill at the office. By then I was already late. I kept thinking I could finish and leave."
"That's not an excuse." My mother pulls out the chair across from me and sits down, but there's no softness in her posture. "Even if you were ill, you had time before that to call her. To prioritize her. You chose not to."
"I know." I press the heels of my hands against my eyes until I see spots. "I know I chose wrong. I've been choosing wrong for months."
"Yes." My mother's voice doesn't waver. "You have. And now you have to live with the consequences."
"She took the earrings." I drop my hands and look at my mother, remembering what Sera said at the gate. "The amber ones you gave her for the anniversary. She said she couldn't bear to leave them."
"Your father and I chose them for her." My mother reaches across to straighten a chair that doesn't need straightening. "I wanted her to have something lovely that night. She shouldn't have had to leave home to keep it lovely."
I have been trying to make her taking the earrings mean she might come back. My mother bought her a gift, and I'm sitting here looking for something in it for myself.
"What do I do?" The question comes out raw and desperate. "How do I fix this?"
"I don't know if you can." My mother stands up, pushing her chair back with a scrape that echoes in the empty room.
"But I know that coming to me for comfort isn't going to help.
You chose Marisol's company over your wife's for months.
You let your best friend become a stranger in her own home.
I'm not going to tell you it's going to be okay when I watched her heart break in this room. "
"You think she should leave me." I can hear the plea in my own voice and hate it. I want my mother to deny it so badly that I almost miss what I'm asking her to excuse.
"I think she gets to decide." My mother moves toward the door, then stops and looks back at me. "I love you. I love her too. I helped her pack on Friday morning because I wouldn't ask her to stay and keep hurting. If you need me to choose against her to comfort you, I won't."
She leaves. I hear her footsteps fade down the hallway, then the sound of a door closing somewhere in the back of the house.
I stay in the chair I should have occupied on Thursday, with nobody across from me.
***
By Wednesday morning, I have given up trying to sleep. I lie in our bed, in sheets that still smell faintly of her perfume, and stare at the ceiling until the darkness starts to turn gray.
I get out of bed as the sun clears the horizon and go downstairs to make coffee.
The kitchen is empty, the house still silent. My father is an early riser. Even in retirement, he still likes to walk the groves before breakfast. My mother is probably avoiding me.
I can't blame her. I'd avoid me too.
The coffee maker gurgles to life.
While I wait, I try again to put Thursday night in order.
I remember being at my desk in the afternoon, going through export paperwork.
I remember my head starting to ache, a strange heaviness settling over me.
I remember thinking I should call Sera, tell her I was running late.
I wanted to be able to say I was leaving, and I kept putting it off.
After that, everything gets blurry.