Chapter 17
Emilia
My apartment is exactly the way I left it.
That’s the problem.
I stand in the doorway for a second before I make myself go in. This is good. This is what I wanted, space, quiet, my own place with my own rules and nobody’s chaos bleeding into every corner of it.
I drop my keys on the hook by the door and walk into the kitchen.
The counter is spotless. Coffee maker where it always is.
The little succulent I’ve had for two years sitting in the window, unbothered, requiring nothing.
I open the fridge. Everything is exactly where I left it.
No juice boxes shoved in sideways. No string cheese multiplying on the second shelf like it reproduces overnight.
I close the fridge.
Move to the living room.
No toys on the floor. No crayon smell. No tiny shoes kicked sideways near the door. No half-finished coffee sitting on the counter from someone who started drinking it and forgot about it the second his phone rang.
Just clean surfaces and silence.
I sit on the couch. Pick up my phone.
I could call a friend. Except the friends I’d actually want to talk to right now are all Hale-adjacent, and that feels like running directly into the problem.
I could call Mason. But Mason will want to come over and do something about it, and there’s nothing to do, and the last thing I need is my brother’s unique brand of protective fury aimed at a situation I can’t even explain to myself yet.
I put the phone face down on the cushion.
I tell myself this is fine.
I repeat that for another two hours while I reorganize my kitchen cabinets, fold laundry that didn’t need folding, and wipe down counters that are already clean.
The apartment has never looked better.
And I have never felt worse.
I keep pretending it’s fine right up until I have to go to bed.
I can’t sleep.
The bed is fine. The apartment is fine. The temperature is fine.
Everything is exactly the way I like it, but I stare at the ceiling until two in the morning thinking about a four-year-old who can’t sleep without a stuffed sea turtle and a man who memorizes donor names without notes and never once made me feel like a backup plan.
I get up at five. Make coffee. Open my laptop.
Work has always been the answer.
My assistant slides a folder across the counter when I walk in.
“The Makiki outreach center sent updated enrollment numbers.” She pauses. “Jake promised them a second classroom sponsor last month, and the paperwork finally cleared.”
“He didn’t put that in the shared drive.”
“He never puts things in the shared drive.” Flat. Unbothered. “But it clears every time.”
I take the folder upstairs and don’t say anything.
One of the junior coordinators is mapping donor touchpoints across the Pacific region in the project room. Sticky notes cover half the wall. He turns when I walk in.
“Do you have Jake’s notes from the Fiji site visit? He went in March, but the summary never made it into the system.”
“I’ll find it.”
“No rush. We just know he tends to remember things that didn’t get documented.” He glances at his wall. “Like the Samoa housing pilot. He visited that family four times before the grant even processed. Nobody asked him to.”
I look up.
He shrugs. “His name comes up a lot when we talk to the community partners. People remember him.”
I take the file and go back to my desk.
At the outreach center that afternoon, a coordinator named Mele stops me on the way out.
“Jake started this program.” She nods toward the reading corner, where a volunteer is working through a picture book with two kids around Poppy’s age.
“He came to a community meeting two years ago. Sat in the back. Didn’t say who he was until someone recognized him.
” She smiles. “By the end he’d committed to three years of funding and spent an hour sitting on the floor with the kids while the adults finished talking. ”
“That sounds like him.”
“He still texts me when enrollment numbers go up.” She looks at me carefully. “He cares about this stuff in a real way. Not a PR way.”
I already know that.
I think I’ve known it for a while.
I just kept ignoring it because that was easier than the alternative.
Sienna shows up at my apartment at seven with Thai food and zero interest in letting me avoid this conversation.
I let her in because I don’t have the bandwidth to fight her tonight.
She surveys my apartment the way a doctor surveys a patient, then sets the food on the counter and hands me a container.
“It’s very clean in here.”
“I just got home.”
“It’s always this clean.” She looks at me. “That’s not a compliment.”
We eat on the couch. I wait for the speech, but Sienna doesn’t do speeches. She just sits with me in the quiet until I fill it.
“I found the custody filing on his laptop,” I finally say. “Four days old. He never mentioned it.”
“I know.”
“He’s been making decisions without me.”
“Emilia.” Her voice doesn’t change. “Why do you think he didn’t tell you?”
“Because he doesn’t know how to let people in.”
“Try again.”
I put my fork down. “Because he was trying to protect me.”
“There it is.”
“That still doesn’t make it okay.”
“No,” she agrees. “But it doesn’t mean what you’re afraid it means, either.” She pulls her legs up under her. “Dane did the exact same thing to me. Twice. Made a decision that affected both of us and justified it by saying he was protecting me.”
“What did you do?”
“I was furious.” The corner of her mouth lifts. “And then I figured out the difference between a man who shuts you out because you don’t matter and a man who shuts you out because you matter too damn much. Those can feel identical from the outside. They’re not.”
I don’t answer.
Because I’m thinking about Jake at the attorney’s office. Jake in the penthouse doorway watching Poppy sleep. Jake at two in the morning admitting he didn’t know how to be somebody’s father and then showing up every single day anyway.
“You know what the real problem with Jake is?” Sienna asks.
I exhale. “There are several.”
“No.” Her voice drops. “He stopped acting like this was temporary a long time ago. You’re just the last person to notice.”
She stays another hour. We don’t talk about Jake again.
On her way out, she pulls on her jacket and says, “Leah texted me earlier. Asked how you were doing.” She pauses at the door. “You should stop by tomorrow. She’s drowning in newborn chaos and Noah is driving her insane.”
When she leaves, the apartment feels emptier than before she got here.
I tell myself I’m just checking on a new mom.
That’s it. That’s the only reason I’m driving to Kailua on a Wednesday morning.
Noah answers the door in a wrinkled T-shirt, with dark circles under his eyes. “She’s in the living room.” He steps back. “Fair warning. She’s going to want to talk about something other than sleep schedules, and I genuinely can’t tell you how relieved I am that you’re here.”
Leah is on the couch with the baby tucked against her chest. She looks exhausted and happy in a way that makes no logical sense.
“Thank God.” She tips her head toward the cushion beside her. “Sit. Noah’s been reorganizing the diaper bag by color since six this morning.”
Noah disappears into the kitchen without comment.
We sit for a minute, just existing together. The baby makes small sounds. Leah adjusts her automatically without looking down.
“How are you doing,” she says. It’s not really a question.
“I’m fine.”
She just looks at me.
“Jake and I fought,” I say. “I found custody paperwork he’d been sitting on for four days. He never said a word to me.”
“Because telling you meant admitting he was scared.”
“It means he made a decision without me.”
“Yes.” She doesn’t argue that. “Noah does the same thing. Decides something affects only him, so he handles it alone.” A pause. “It took me a while to understand he wasn’t shutting me out. He was trying to be enough on his own so I didn’t have to carry it.”
“That’s not how partnership works.”
“No. It’s not.” She shifts the baby gently.
“But there’s a difference between a man who excludes you because you don’t matter and a man who excludes you because the idea of you hurting on his behalf is unbearable to him.
” She meets my gaze. “Jake loves people through consistency. Not through big gestures. Through showing up. Through staying. He just took a long time figuring out how to say it out loud.”
Noah reappears and hands Leah a mug. She looks at it. He takes it back, disappears, and returns with a fresh one. She accepts it without a word, and something about that tiny exchange sits heavy in my chest.
I stay another hour. When I stand to leave, Leah catches my arm.
“Maggie called this morning.” Her eyes are careful. “She’s not worried. She just wants you to know her door is open.”
We both know what that means.
I sit in my car outside Diamond Head for ten minutes before I get out.
I almost don’t. I start the engine twice. Tell myself I’m tired and it’s late and I’ve had enough honest conversations for one day.
Then I get out anyway.
Maggie is on the lanai when I come around the side of the house.
The ocean is loud tonight. We stand there and let it be loud for a while.
“I haven’t called him,” I say.
Maggie doesn’t look surprised by that.
“I don’t know what I’d say.”
“Yes, you do.”
I look at her.
“That boy’s loved you for years.” She says it simply, like she’s commenting on the weather.
I shake my head automatically. “You don’t know that, Maggie.”
A small smile touches her mouth. “A few years ago, your name came up at Sunday dinner because Richard wanted someone new leading donor strategy for the education initiative.” She looks out at the water.
“Jake spent twenty minutes arguing with his father because, as he said, nobody in that room worked harder than you did.”
My grip tightens slightly on the railing.
“He got genuinely angry about it,” she adds. “Which, for Jake, usually means he cares more than he wants people to notice.”