6. Audrey
— ? —
Audrey
Three days.
It’s been three days since I threw Rowan out of our house, and I’ve spent most of that time lying to our daughter.
“Where’s Daddy?”
The question comes every morning, every afternoon, every bedtime. Lily asks it like she’s checking the weather - casually, persistently - and each time the answer tastes like ashes in my mouth.
“Daddy’s staying with Grandma for a while. Grown-up stuff.”
“What kind of grown-up stuff?”
“The boring kind.” I force a smile. “Nothing you need to worry about.”
She doesn’t believe me. Her green eyes - his eyes - study my face with that too-knowing intensity, and I can see the wheels turning behind them.
“Did you have a fight?”
“Sometimes grown-ups need space to figure things out.”
“Emma’s parents had space.” Lily’s voice goes small. “Now her dad lives in a condo and she only sees him on weekends.”
The knife twists deeper.
“That’s not-” I stop. I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t know if Rowan will be back, if I want him back, if our family can survive what he’s done. “We’re just taking some time. That’s all.”
“Promise?”
I can’t promise. I can’t lie to her, not about something this big.
“I promise that I love you,” I say instead. “And Daddy loves you. No matter what happens with the grown-up stuff, that’s never going to change.”
She seems to accept that. She hugs me hard, her small arms squeezing around my waist, and I hold on like I’m drowning.
I can’t protect her from this. I can’t protect either of us.
Ruth shows up on day four.
She doesn’t knock - just walks into the kitchen where I’m washing the same dish for the fourth time, staring out the window at the water.
“You need to eat something.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“You haven’t been hungry for three days. That’s not healthy.”
I keep scrubbing the dish. It’s already clean. I don’t care.
“Audrey.” Ruth’s hand closes over mine, stilling the motion. “Stop.”
I stop.
The dish slips from my fingers, clattering into the sink. I stare at my hands - red and raw from hot water - and realize I’ve been crying without noticing.
“I don’t know how to do this,” I whisper.
“Do what?”
“Any of it. Pretend to be okay for Lily. Decide what I want. Figure out if my marriage is worth saving.” I look at Ruth, and her face blurs through my tears.
“He was everything to me. He was my whole life. And he just - he threw it away. For texts. For someone who made him feel special for five minutes.”
“I know.”
“I’m so angry I can’t breathe. And I’m so sad I can’t move. And I don’t know which feeling is real.”
“They’re both real.” Ruth guides me to a chair, sits across from me at the kitchen table. “Grief isn’t linear, sweetheart. Neither is betrayal. You’re allowed to feel everything at once.”
“That doesn’t make it easier.”
“No. It doesn’t.”
We sit in silence for a long moment. Through the window, I can see the bay - gray today, matching my mood. A fishing boat cuts across the water, leaving a white wake behind it.
“He called me,” Ruth says finally. “This morning.”
My spine stiffens. “I don’t want to hear it.”
“I think you need to.”
“Ruth-”
“He’s falling apart.” Her voice is quiet. “He’s barely sleeping. He won’t eat. He keeps asking me if there’s anything he can do, any way to fix this, and I keep telling him that’s not my decision to make.”
Good. Let him fall apart. Let him feel an ounce of what I’m feeling.
“He ended things with her,” Ruth continues. “That first day, right after he got to my house. Deleted everything. Blocked her number.”
“Am I supposed to be impressed?”
“No. I’m just telling you what happened.”
“Does it matter?” I push back from the table. “Does any of it matter? He still did it. He still chose someone else over me for three months.”
“He chose wrong. That’s true.” Ruth’s eyes are steady on mine. “But he’s trying to choose right now. That has to count for something.”
“Does it?”
She doesn’t answer. We both know I’m the only one who gets to decide that.
Later, after Ruth has gone home and Lily’s in bed, I find myself in the living room closet.
There’s a box on the top shelf. Cardboard, water-stained from the time the roof leaked. I haven’t opened it in years, but I know exactly what’s inside.
Our wedding album. Lily’s hospital bracelet. The ticket stubs from our first date - that terrible movie we laughed through, his arm around my shoulders, my heart pounding so hard I thought he must be able to hear it.
I pull the box down and sit on the floor with it.
The wedding photos are hard to look at. Rowan in his suit, that crooked smile aimed directly at me. Me in my mother’s dress, flowers trembling in my hands. We look so young. So certain.
We were going to be different. We were going to be the ones who made it.
At the bottom of the box, under everything else, I find something I don’t remember.
A folded piece of paper, Rowan’s handwriting. Dated two years ago.
Things I love about Audrey: The way she sings off-key when she thinks no one’s listening. How she cries at commercials about dogs. The face she makes when Lily does something brilliant. Her hands. Her laugh. Her impossible stubbornness. The way she believed in me before I believed in myself.
I read it three times. Four. The ink blurs through my tears.
He was going to give this to me. Our anniversary, probably. And then he forgot - got distracted, got overwhelmed, got lost in whatever was happening inside his head.
The way she believed in me before I believed in myself.
Did I stop believing? Did I stop making him feel like I was in his corner?
I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore.
I put the note back in the box. Close the lid. Shove it onto the shelf where I don’t have to look at it.
But I can still feel it there. Waiting. A reminder of who we used to be, and who we’ve become, and the impossible distance between.
That night, I dream of the cottage burning.
I’m standing on the lawn, watching flames lick the seafoam paint, and I’m screaming Rowan’s name but he can’t hear me. He’s inside - I can see his silhouette in the window - and he’s not moving, just standing there as the fire climbs the walls.
I wake up gasping, heart racing, sheets tangled around my legs.
It’s 3 AM. The house is dark and quiet. Through the wall, I can hear Lily’s soft breathing - steady, peaceful, untroubled by nightmares she doesn’t understand.
I get up. I don’t know why. I pad downstairs and stand in the kitchen and stare at his phone, still sitting on the counter where I left it days ago.
The screen is cracked. The battery’s dead.
I plug it in anyway. Watch it boot up, notifications flooding the screen.
Twelve missed calls from his mother. Three from his boss. A calendar reminder about Lily’s dental appointment next week.
And one text from M ??, sent the morning after he left:
Please call me. I heard what happened. I’m so sorry. I never meant to-
The message cuts off. He must have blocked her before she finished typing.
I stare at the screen for a long time.
I never meant to.
Did she mean it? Did either of them? Does intention matter when the damage is already done?
I don’t know. But somewhere in the wreckage of my marriage, buried under the anger and the grief and the fear, there’s a tiny, stubborn spark that refuses to go out.
The way she believed in me before I believed in myself.
He wrote that. Two years ago, before any of this, he sat down and wrote a list of things he loved about me. And then he forgot. And then he found someone else to make him feel seen.
But he wrote it.
That has to count for something.
I don’t know if it’s enough. I don’t know if anything will ever be enough. But for the first time since I found those messages, I let myself imagine a future where Rowan comes home. Where we fight through this, together. Where we build something stronger on the bones of what he broke.
It’s terrifying. It might be impossible.
But it’s there. A flicker of hope in all that darkness.
I turn off his phone and go back to bed, and when I finally fall asleep, I don’t dream of fire.