6. Maren #2
Nora nods and disappears. I take one more look at my phone, at the campaign photos, at the comments, at the article that describes my marriage like it doesn’t exist, and then I put it in my desk drawer.
I have work to do.
Rhodes does come home that night. He brings flowers, peonies, which he knows are my favorite, and the kind of expensive wine that means he’s trying.
We don’t fight. That’s almost worse.
We talk around the edges of it. He apologizes for the campaign photos. I accept the apology. He promises to be more thoughtful about optics. I tell him optics aren’t really the problem.
“Then what’s the problem?”
“I don’t know how to explain it in a way you’ll understand.”
“Try.”
But I can’t. Because the problem isn’t the photos or the article or even Rachel. The problem is that I’ve spent eleven years being the person Rhodes comes home to, and somewhere along the way, I stopped being the person he brings with him.
We go to bed. He holds me, and I let him.
In the dark, I think about the gala. The flowers I’ll make, the presentation I won’t be in, the room full of people celebrating a success story that started with me on a folding chair at 3 a.m., and doesn’t mention me at all.
“I love you,” Rhodes murmurs against my hair.
“I know.”
“Is that enough?”
I don’t answer. I’m not sure I have one.
His breathing evens out. Sleep takes him the way it always does, fast, complete, the unconsciousness of someone whose conscience is clear.
I lie awake for hours, staring at the champagne bottle on my nightstand. The ranunculus inside it. The crooked stem that should have been thrown away but wasn’t.
He kept the flower. He keeps the marriage.
I’m starting to wonder if keeping something is the same as caring for it.
My phone buzzes. I reach for it, expecting Nora or maybe Nina with a question about tomorrow’s deliveries.
It’s not Nora.
It’s a Google alert I set up years ago, back when I still cared about tracking Rhodes’s press coverage. I’d forgotten it was even active.
The headline makes my stomach drop.
INSIDE THE CALLOWAY EMPIRE: Sources Say Rhodes Calloway and Rachel Vaughn Are “Closer Than Ever”
I turn off my phone.
But I don’t sleep.
The next three days pass in a blur of work and silence.
Rhodes calls. I answer. We have the kind of conversations that sound normal if you’re not listening for the gaps, the places where we used to laugh and now just pause, the questions that used to be curious and now are just polite.
He tells me about the new venue inspection in Denver. The plumbing issues that have pushed back the opening timeline. The meetings that keep running long and the flights that keep getting delayed.
I tell him about the gala arrangements. The color palette we’re working with. The way Nina accidentally ordered three hundred roses in the wrong shade of blush and how we spent four hours on the phone with suppliers trying to fix it.
Normal things. Marriage things. The texture of two lives running parallel instead of intertwined.
On Thursday, he flies out for the final inspection. Denver, he says. Back by Friday evening. He promises dinner, a real one, at the restaurant where we had our rehearsal dinner the night before our wedding.
“I want to fix this,” he says before he boards. “I know I keep getting it wrong, but I’m trying.”
“I know you are.”
“Is that enough?”
It’s the second time he’s asked me that. I still don’t have an answer.
Friday afternoon, I’m elbow-deep in gala flowers when my phone rings. Rhodes.
“Hey.”
“I have to stay another night.”
I set down my scissors. “Okay.”
Silence.
“That’s it?” he asks.
“What do you want me to say?”
“I don’t know. Be angry, yell at me - something.”
“Would that help?”
“It would help me feel like you still care enough to be upset.”
I look at the half-finished bouquet in front of me. The roses that Nina ordered in the wrong color but that we made work anyway. The greenery that’s slightly wilted because the supplier was late and the cooler was acting up.
“I’m tired, Rhodes.”
“Of what?”
“Of being disappointed. Of expecting you and adjusting when you don’t show up, of having the same fight every time your schedule changes and never getting anywhere.” I pick up the scissors again. “I don’t have the energy to be angry anymore. I just have acceptance.”
“That’s worse.”
“I know.”
He’s quiet. I can hear airport noise in the background, announcements, distant conversations, the hum of a place designed for departures.
“I love you,” he says finally.
“I love you too. Come home when you can.”
I hang up. The gala flowers need finishing. The acceptance needs to become something I can live with.
But my hands won’t stop shaking, and the roses blur together until I can’t tell if they’re the wrong color or the right one.
Nina finds me twenty minutes later, sitting on the floor of the cooler with a half-finished arrangement in my lap.
“Maren? There’s something you should-”
“If it’s another article, I don’t want to see it.”
“It’s not an article.” She holds out her phone, face pale. “It’s a photo.”
I take the phone.
The image loads slowly, pixel by pixel, like it’s giving me time to prepare for something I’ll never be ready for.
Rhodes. A hotel hallway. Early morning light through a window at the end of the corridor.
And Rachel, stepping out of his room.