5. Audrey
— ? —
Audrey
The kitchen floor is cold.
I don’t know how long I’ve been sitting here - minutes, hours, some impossible stretch of time that doesn’t feel real. My face is wet with tears I don’t remember crying, and my hands are shaking, and somewhere in the distance I can hear the sound of his truck starting.
He left.
I told him to leave, and he left. No fight. No argument. Just keys and jacket and gone.
For five minutes, I didn’t feel like a disappointment.
The words keep echoing in my head, bouncing off the walls of my skull like bullets. Nine words that explain everything and nothing, that somehow make the betrayal both better and worse.
He wasn’t bored with me. He wasn’t looking for excitement or novelty or some younger, prettier version of the woman he married.
He was looking for someone who didn’t make him feel like a failure.
Did I do that? Did I make him feel that way?
I think about the last few months. The sighs when he forgot to take out the trash. The eye rolls when he left his socks on the floor. The way I stopped saying thank you for the small things because I was too tired and too busy and too overwhelmed with holding everything together.
But that’s not fair. That’s not the same thing. Forgetting to take out the trash isn’t a reason to find someone else.
I pull myself up from the floor. My legs are stiff, my back aching. The coffee maker beeps - finished brewing, as if anything about this morning is normal.
His phone is still on the floor where it landed.
I pick it up. The screen is cracked now, a spiderweb of fractures across the glass. Good. Let it be broken. Let everything be broken.
I scroll through the messages again. Not because I want to - because I can’t stop myself.
M: I love talking to you. You always know exactly what to say.
Rowan: You’re easy to talk to. That’s the thing.
M: Wish I could see you tonight.
Rowan: Next week. I’ll figure something out.
He was making plans. Actively, deliberately making plans to see her again.
It never went physical. That’s what he said. Is that supposed to be comforting?
I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore.
Ruth calls at noon.
“Lily’s asking when you’re coming to get her.”
“Soon.” My voice sounds wrong - hoarse and scratchy, like I’ve been screaming. “An hour. Maybe two.”
“Audrey.” Ruth’s tone sharpens. “What’s happened?”
“I can’t-” I break off, press my hand to my mouth. If I start crying again, I won’t stop. “I can’t do this right now, Ruth. Please. Just tell Lily I’ll be there soon.”
Silence on the other end. Then, softly: “He told me.”
Of course he did. He drove straight to his mother’s house, because where else would he go? Rowan’s never been good at being alone. That’s part of the problem - he needs someone to witness him, to validate him, to make him feel real.
And I stopped doing that. I stopped being his witness because I was too busy being everything else.
“Good,” I say flatly. “Then you know.”
“He’s devastated, Audrey. I’ve never seen him like this.”
“Good.”
“I’m not defending what he did-”
“Then don’t.”
I hang up before she can say anything else. My hand is shaking as I set the phone down on the counter, as I stare at the roses he brought me on Wednesday - already dying, petals curled and brown.
I throw them in the trash.
I don’t know what to do with myself.
The cottage feels too big now, too empty.
Every room is full of memories I can’t escape.
The couch where we used to curl up and watch movies.
The bedroom where he used to reach for me in the dark.
The bathroom where I stripped off the lingerie he never saw and buried it under tissues like evidence of a crime.
I end up in Lily’s room, sitting on her bed, holding Mr. Buttons - the stuffed rabbit she’s had since she was two. He’s threadbare and faded, one eye slightly crooked from where I sewed it back on after a washing machine incident.
How am I going to tell her?
That’s the thought that keeps circling back, louder than all the others. How do I explain to my eight-year-old that her father did something unforgivable? That Mommy and Daddy might not be okay? That the family she trusts to be solid and permanent is cracking down the middle?
I can’t protect her from this. I can’t protect any of us.
The tears come again. I let them.
Ruth shows up at three.
I hear her car in the driveway, then her key in the lock. She’s the only other person with a key to this cottage - Rowan gave it to her years ago, in case of emergencies.
I guess this qualifies.
“Audrey.”
She’s standing in the living room doorway, coat still on, eyes red-rimmed. She’s been crying too. Of course she has. This is her son, her family. This disaster belongs to all of us.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I say.
“I know.” She doesn’t move, doesn’t approach. Just stands there, steady and patient, the way she’s always been. “But Lily’s asking questions, and I didn’t know what to tell her.”
“Where is she?”
“With my neighbor. I told her I needed to check on something, that I’d be back soon.” Ruth pauses. “She knows something’s wrong, Audrey. She’s too smart not to know.”
She has her father’s eyes and her father’s smile and his exact inability to hide what she’s feeling.
“What did you tell her?”
“That you and Rowan had a grown-up disagreement. That sometimes mommies and daddies need time apart to figure things out.”
“And she believed that?”
“She asked if you were getting divorced.”
The word hits me like a slap.
Divorce. Is that where this is heading? Is that what I want?
I don’t know. I don’t know anything except that I can’t imagine sleeping next to him tonight, can’t imagine looking at his face across the breakfast table, can’t imagine pretending everything is fine while the weight of his betrayal sits on my chest like a stone.
“What did he tell you?” I ask. “Exactly.”
Ruth moves into the room finally, settles onto the chair across from me. Her hands are folded in her lap, calm and steady, but I can see the tension in her shoulders.
“He told me about the woman. Maryse. The texts.” She meets my eyes. “He told me it never went further than that.”
“And you believe him?”
“I do.” She holds up a hand before I can argue. “That doesn’t make it okay. What he did was a betrayal, Audrey. I’m not here to defend him.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Because you’re my daughter too.” Her voice cracks, just slightly. “You’ve been my daughter since the day Rowan brought you home, twenty years old and terrified of meeting his mother. And I love you both, and I don’t want to watch this family fall apart.”
I feel something loosen in my chest. A crack in the wall I’ve been building all day.
“He said I made him feel like a disappointment.”
Ruth closes her eyes briefly. “He told me.”
“Is that true? Did I do that?”
“Oh, sweetheart.” She’s next to me now, on the bed, taking my hand in hers. “Rowan has been afraid of being a disappointment since before you were born. It has nothing to do with you.”
“But I-”
“Let me tell you something about my son.” Ruth squeezes my hand. “His father was a good man, but he never learned how to say what he felt. David loved Rowan - I know he did - but he didn’t know how to show it. Rowan spent his whole childhood trying to earn words that never came.”
I think about my husband. The way he lights up when someone praises him. The way he deflates when things don’t go perfectly.
The way he’s always, always trying to prove he’s enough.
“That’s not an excuse,” I say.
“No. It’s not.” Ruth shakes her head. “There’s no excuse for what he did. But there might be an explanation.”
“I don’t want explanations.” The tears are back, hot and angry. “I want my husband back. The one who used to look at me like I was the only thing in the room worth seeing.”
“That man is still in there, sweetheart. He’s just lost.”
Lost isn’t the same as gone.
But I don’t know if I have the strength to find him. I don’t know if I want to.
“What do I do?” I ask, and I hate how small my voice sounds. “What am I supposed to do now?”
Ruth pulls me into her arms. She smells like cinnamon and dish soap and home - like every Sunday dinner at her house, every holiday, every moment she’s been there to catch us when we fell.
“Right now, you don’t have to do anything. Right now, you just grieve. The decisions can come later.”
I bury my face in her shoulder and sob like I’m eight years old again, like my mother is holding me after a nightmare.
Except this nightmare is real. And I don’t know how to wake up.