Chapter 19
He had made a number of mistakes over the years.
He had allowed himself to take her for granted.
He remembered her birthdays and their anniversaries, but he forgot what had attracted him to her in the first place.
He had let her fire die down to embers and did nothing to stoke it.
But those were the least of his crimes. He had shared himself with another woman while she waited for him to come home.
She had trusted him, and he had proven in so many ways that he wasn't worthy of that trust.
She hadn't spoken a single word to him since she found out except to ask him if she should move out. Her silence had cut sharper than any accusation, cut deeper than his son's hatred.
And yet, even in her silence, she had cared for them.
Ronin saw it everywhere. The laundry baskets were empty; clothes folded in neat piles.
The freezer was stacked with labelled containers—meals that Sage had prepared in advance.
The fridge shelves were lined with vegetables, milk, fresh bread; things she had thought to leave behind.
Even in leaving, she had been looking out for them. The knowledge gnawed at him.
The next few days blurred into each other. David stayed locked in his room, his footsteps muted overhead. When he finally came down, his eyes were red, his face blotched. He ignored the plate Ronin put in front of him, pushing food away with shaking hands. "I'm not hungry."
"You need to eat, D-man," Ronin tried gently, but the boy's shoulders only stiffened.
"No, I don't. And stop calling me that. Don’t pretend you care when you don’t."
The words landed like a slap. David pushed back from the table and stormed upstairs again, his door slamming a beat later. The silence that followed was worse than the shouting.
School went on, but half-heartedly. He was in his Year 10, and he needed to focus, but his mother's absence had dulled him. When his mates turned up with their kits, insisting he come to football practice, he had flat-out refused.
"What's the point?" was all he'd said in a lifeless voice and shut his door again. His son sounded defeated, and it was all his fault.
Ronin couldn't blame him. The boy was grieving in his own way. But the sight of him—slumped, withdrawn, and broken—was harder to bear than his own guilt.
David's muffled sobs every night were like echoes of his failure.
Their beautiful house dragged him down with it.
Each room carried Sage's touch—the soft lace curtains she had chosen, the carefully hung frames on the stairwell, the scent of her soap lingering in the bathroom.
In the evenings, he'd sit alone at the dining table, staring at the runner she'd laid out last Christmas and decided not to change, thinking this was more her house than his.
She made it a home; I only lived in it.
Dinners were silent. Attempts at conversation with David went nowhere, the boy answering in monosyllables and grunts, if at all.
Ronin took a few days off work, not that he knew what to do with himself.
His phone buzzed relentlessly. Amanda's texts kept coming, more and more panicked by the day.
At first, they were pleading—reminders of what they'd shared, lines about how much she loved him, how they could "make it work," how Sage would never understand him the way she did.
But by the third day after Sage had left, the flavour of the messages had changed.
The official notice had been served, and Amanda hadn't expected it. She had thought he'd protect her, believe her, stand by her side, but the paperwork told another story.
Her fury bled through every line.
So that's it? After everything, you're going to throw me to the wolves?
James can never find out about the baby, do you hear me? Never.
I can't believe you'd do this to me. After all the nights we had, after how much I loved you.
You're a coward, Ronin. A bloody coward. Never saw this coming. Think of my mental health. Think of your baby.
What happened to "I don't want to be the other woman in your marriage” and "I never wanted to hurt your wife, never"?
The only thing consistent about Amanda was she like to add the word ‘never’ like a punctuation.
He muted the phone, unable to bear the shrill buzz of each new message.
But the trail never left him—the betrayal and the consequences he'd helped create.
And yet, beneath Amanda's anger, the words that clung were the ones that exposed the truth he'd ignored: she had expected him to choose her, to protect her.
But now, he'd lost Sage. You don't know what you had until you have lost it. And the realization had come too late...
He didn't want Amanda, he wanted his Sage back.
As the days dragged, Ronin's anxiety worsened until it felt like a countdown to a panic attack. He and David coexisted more than they lived together—passing each other in hallways, sharing the dinner table in silence before quickly retreating to their separate corners of the house.
Ronin couldn't sleep in the master bedroom.
He had taken to sleeping in the guest bedroom.
He had found Sage's favourite brand of shampoo and washed her clothes in it.
Her clothes were on rotation in his bed to help him drift off.
When you have spent most of your life sleeping next to one person, their presence becomes a necessity, their absence a bottomless pit of despair.
There was a strange atmosphere now, as though the house itself was holding its breath, waiting for something to happen. Every creak of the floorboards, every hum of the boiler seemed louder in the absence of Sage's voice.
On the seventh evening, David finally spoke, his tone grudging. "She called me."
Ronin's head snapped up. "What? When?"
David's mouth pressed into a thin line. "Almost every day, actually. I called her back today. We fought. I told her she shouldn't have left; she said she'd be home soon." His voice wobbled before he masked it with a shrug. "Said she was somewhere in Scotland."
Hope flared in Ronin's chest. "Where exactly?"
"She didn't say."
It took everything in him to stop himself from grabbing his son by the shoulders and shaking some answers out of him.
Ronin dug out his phone and opened the family locator app, desperate for a pin on the map.
Nothing had changed since he had first checked it the day she had disappeared.
Just his own location and David's. Sage's icon was gone.
She'd been clever enough to turn it off before she left. She had planned this well.
That night, when the silence grew unbearable, he sat at her old desktop—she hated laptops and insisted on keeping it.
He hated his desperation as he sank as low as possible and tried to log into her email.
She kept her passwords the same—his name and date of birth—but that did not work.
He tried again. Then again, fists clenching with each denial.
She had changed it.
Her social media offered nothing, either. The last post had been weeks ago—a blurred photo of David mid-run on the football pitch. There were no updates, no trail. She had simply vanished from the online world.
Ronin leaned back in the chair, staring at the blank monitor glow. It was like she'd sealed off every door he might use to reach her. She even left their joint debit card behind. All that remained was the echo of her absence and the gnawing knowledge that she had chosen to be unreachable.
And yet, she had told David she would be home soon...
He clung to those words, though he didn't know whether to believe them or if believing them would break him all over again.
That night, Ronin sat in the living room, the house too still around him. He let his mind wander back, three summers ago, to that last family trip to Greece.
It had been Sage's idea, of course. She'd booked the flights, compared hotels until she found one with a pool big enough for David, and had drawn up an itinerary so their son wouldn't complain about being bored.
She'd even pencilled in downtime, beach days, trips to the ruins, a visit to a traditional Greek tavern because Ronin had once, in passing, mentioned he'd like to try ouzo in its homeland.
She'd thought of everything.
He could see her even now, standing in the doorway of their little rental flat, hair pulled back, maps and tickets clutched in her hand, cheeks flushed with the heat.
She'd found a quiet beach the locals favoured, somewhere less crowded, where the water was clear and shallow enough for David to swim safely.
She'd lit up when she showed him the plan, her soft grey eyes hopeful.
But the day had come, and he'd been buried in his laptop, emails and calls that "couldn't wait.
" He'd worked from morning until the sun went down, while Sage's smile had dimmed, then steadied into that careful mask she wore when she didn't want to upset him.
He realized with a start that the Sage from the first year of their relationship would have upset him with impunity, unplugging his laptop and dragging him into the sunshine.
This newer Sage had learned to walk on eggshells over the years. Why?
She'd simply taken David by the hand, packed a bag with towels, fruit and bottled water, and left him to his work. They'd come back later with salt in their hair and sand still clinging to their legs, laughing at some joke only they shared.
And he had looked up from his screen, guilty for a moment, before shrugging it off.
Sage had planned every detail of that trip to make him happy. And in the end, she'd carried it alone, as she always did while he told himself he'd make it up to her next time.
But there hadn't been a next time.
He had ruined them and, in the end, himself.