14. Fiona
Fiona
The bell hadn’t even finished echoing down the hall before the room filled with the sound of chairs scraping and backpacks hitting the floor.
Fiona moved through the space without thought, flipping on the string lights that lined the whiteboard, plucking yesterday’s objectives off the chart with a flick of her wrist.
“Okay, team,” she said, clapping her hands twice. “Let’s shake off the weekend brains.”
Groans answered her, but they were half-hearted, the kind that meant her students were glad to be back even if they’d never admit it out loud. A pencil rolled off a desk and clattered to the floor. Someone was already asking about snack time.
Fiona smiled and pulled her cardigan tighter around her.
This was her rhythm. Her terrain.
“Work’s on your desk. You’ve got five minutes. Bonus sticker if you use a semicolon correctly.”
A chorus of groans again, more dramatic this time, but pencils began to scratch against paper. Fiona circled the room slowly, checking in without hovering. Lucas had his hoodie pulled low over his eyes. Marley was chewing the end of her braid. Isaiah had already finished.
“Miss Fiona?” It was Rae, her voice quiet.
Fiona crouched next to her desk. “Yeah, kiddo?”
Rae tilted her worksheet toward her, frowning at a short writing prompt: Describe a time you felt proud of yourself.
“I don’t know what to write,” she mumbled. “I don’t really do anything worth writing about.”
Fiona’s heart gave a quiet, familiar ache.
She tapped the pencil between Rae’s fingers. “Hey,” she said gently. “Can I tell you a secret?”
Rae looked up.
“I think the bravest thing in the world is just… trying again when something’s hard. So if you’ve ever kept going after you messed up? You’ve already got something to be proud of.”
Rae blinked. “Even if it’s dumb?”
“Especially if it’s dumb,” Fiona said. “You don’t have to be perfect to be proud.”
Rae didn’t answer, but she did pick her pencil back up.
Fiona straightened, moving on. She could offer Rae that kind of grace without hesitation—so why did it feel impossible to extend it to herself?
She wasn’t anyone’s joke here.
She was Miss Fiona—the teacher who gave out stickers for trying, who made space for kids to feel big in their own skins.
Outside this room, her life felt like it was tilting off its axis. But here—here she was steady.
And maybe, she thought, as the second hand swept around the clock, maybe that was enough to hold onto for now.
By the time Fiona pulled into Emma's gravel driveway, her shoulders ached and her eyes felt gritty from the drive. An hour and fifteen minutes. Tomorrow she'd have to do it all over again.
She sat in the car for a moment, engine ticking as it cooled, and stared at the warm yellow light spilling from Emma's kitchen window.
Inside, she could see movement—two figures bustling around, opening cabinets, gesturing with wooden spoons.
Normal people doing normal things. Making dinner together without wondering if their partner found their thoughts embarrassing.
Without wondering if the person who was supposed to love them most actually thought their job was pathetic, their personality ridiculous, their earnest hope something to roll his eyes at.
The thought made her stomach clench all over again.
She'd managed to keep it together all day. Smiled at her students, helped with math problems. But now, sitting alone in the growing dusk, the weight of it all pressed down on her chest like a stone.
Dean had made her into a character. A joke. And the worst part—the part that made her want to crawl under a rock and never come out—was that she could see why people found it funny.
Because she was those things. She did think baked goods solved everything. She did cry over owls and tell embarrassing stories and say things that probably sounded incredibly naive to sophisticated city people.
She wasn't smart like them. Wasn't sharp or witty or effortlessly cool. She was just... simple. Small-town. Exactly the kind of person who would inspire an social media account called @shitfionasays.
He wasn’t supposed to have shared that with everyone. Anger and shame fought for dominance inside her.
Fiona forced herself out of the car, grabbing her bag from the backseat. Her legs felt heavy as she climbed the porch steps.
The front door opened before she could knock.
"There she is," Emma said, wiping her hands on a dish towel. "Perfect timing. We're making Milo's famous chili."
"It's not famous," came a voice from the kitchen. "It's just chili with too much cumin."
“Famously too much,” Emma grinned.
Fiona managed a small smile as she stepped inside. The house smelled like onions and garlic and something warm and comforting. Milo appeared in the doorway, beer in hand, and gave her a nod.
"Hey, Fiona. Emma said you needed a place to crash."
"Thanks," she said quietly. "I really appreciate it." She was planning on chipping in for rent, of course—she might be a mess, but she wasn’t going to be a freeloader.
He studied her face for a second—taking in whatever exhaustion and hurt she wasn't managing to hide—then nodded again. "I'm gonna go check the game," he said, disappearing into the living room with the kind of tact that suggested Emma had briefed him.
Emma waited until they heard the TV click on, then touched Fiona's arm gently. "Come on. I’ve given you a full day. You can tell me while I stir."
In the kitchen, Emma handed her a glass of wine and went back to the stove. Fiona perched on one of the mismatched stools at the counter, watching her little sister move around the familiar space.
"So," Emma said, not looking up from the pot. "What did the fuckhead do?"
Fiona almost choked on her wine. "Emma."
"What? I've been calling him that in my head since you showed up yesterday looking like someone had kicked your dog." She glanced over. "Was I wrong?"
Fiona stared down at her hands wrapped around the wine glass. The words felt too big, too humiliating to say out loud. Here she was, the older sister who was supposed to have her life figured out, running home to Emma like a teenager who'd gotten her heart broken at prom.
Emma, who had a real relationship with someone who actually respected her. Emma, who was younger but somehow wiser, who would never be stupid enough to trust someone so completely that she'd hand them ammunition to destroy her with.
Fiona was supposed to be the big sister, the one with answers. But she had thrown her whole life at the first man who'd made her feel special.
She'd met Dean in the most ordinary way—at a literacy event. He’d poured her a drink and asked her real questions while everyone else talked over each other.
He’d listened. Smiled like he meant it. Told her she was refreshing, like the world didn’t have enough softness in it anymore.
Fiona had fallen fast—because why wouldn’t she? He made her feel luminous, like her every dorky observation and open-hearted truth was a secret the world had been waiting to hear.
She hadn’t realized that loving her like that wasn’t the same as respecting her.
"He..." she started, then stopped. How do you tell your little sister that your husband thinks you're an idiot? That he's been proving it to the internet for two years? That maybe he's right?
She took a breath. "He's been posting about me. Online. Without telling me."
Emma's wooden spoon paused. "Posting what?"
"Things I say. Things I do. Private stuff." Fiona's voice got smaller. "Making fun of me."
The spoon clattered against the side of the pot. Emma turned around fully, her face shifting from confused to alarmed to furious in the span of three seconds.
"What do you mean making fun of you?"
Fiona couldn't meet her eyes. "There's this account. He's been... collecting stories. About me being dumb. Naive. All the embarrassing things I've told him, he's been posting them for people to laugh at."
"Jesus Christ, Fiona." Emma was staring at her with those wide, horrified eyes.
"And his friends all follow it. His coworkers. At the awards dinner...” Her voice cracked. "They've all been laughing at me this whole time."
Emma was quiet for a long moment, her hands gripping the edge of the counter.
Fiona could practically see her little sister putting the pieces together—all those times Fiona had talked about how "funny" Dean's friends were, how "clever" their conversations seemed.
She'd been the entertainment, the silly small-town girl performing for an audience that saw her as nothing more than a walking punchline.
"How long?" she asked finally.
"I don't know. I haven't looked. I can't." Fiona pressed her palms against her eyes. "I'm too embarrassed."
"Embarrassed?" Emma's voice was sharp. "Fiona, you didn't do anything wrong."
The humiliation of even saying it out loud made Fiona want to disappear into the kitchen floor.
"But I did." The words tumbled out before she could stop them. "I am all those things. I am naive. I do say stupid stuff. I'm exactly as dumb as that account makes me sound."
"Stop it."
She imagined strangers scrolling through her life, laughing in their beds or at bus stops or during coffee breaks—snickering over her private thoughts while she was standing right there in the world, thinking she was loved.
The embarrassment curled hot and acidic in her belly. Her life had been background noise for someone else’s entertainment.
"It's true?—"
"Stop it right now." Emma moved around the counter, taking Fiona's face in her hands. "You are not dumb. You are not stupid. You are kind and trusting and you see magic in things other people miss. That's not a flaw, that's a gift."
Fiona's eyes filled with tears. "It doesn't feel like a gift. It feels like a joke."
"Because he made it into one. Because he took the things that make you beautiful and turned them into content for assholes to consume." Emma's voice was fierce. "That's not on you. That's on him."
The reality was too much, too big—how completely, how devastatingly she had been fooled. She had spent two years believing she was in the safest place in the world, that Dean's arms were where her vulnerabilities could live without fear.
She had given him every tender, breakable part of herself—her silly fears, her earnest hopes, her moments of pure, unguarded joy—because she thought that's what marriage meant.
That's what love was supposed to be. But that’s not what Fiona had had with Dean. She suddenly felt exhausted. Too tired of it all.
“I thought he loved me.”
"I know, honey." Emma's thumb brushed away a tear from Fiona's cheek.
She thought about all the times she’d spoken about Dean to her family—gushed about how attentive he was, how lucky she felt. She’d bragged about him. Showed them pictures, told stories. And all along, he’d been looking down on her. What did that make her? Gullible? Pathetic? A joke ?
No. What did that make him ? A liar. A coward. A cruel bastard who'd made her trust into his entertainment.
From the living room came the sound of cheering—someone had scored a touchdown. Normal life continuing while Fiona's world felt like it was ending.
She pressed her palms against her eyes, and when she pulled them away, the hurt had crystallized into pure, clean anger.
"I can never forgive him for this,” she whispered.
It was late.
Emma and Milo had gone to bed an hour ago.
The house was quiet, save for the hum of the fridge and the occasional creak of the old wood frame settling into night.
Fiona sat cross-legged on the guest bed, her laptop warm against her thighs, a spiral notebook open beside her—half-covered in doodles and half in scribbled thoughts she hadn’t known she needed to write.
Something had been circling in her head since earlier—since that moment in the kitchen when Emma had looked her dead in the eyes and said: That’s not a flaw. That’s a gift.
It didn’t feel like a gift. It felt like something people laughed at. It felt like vulnerability that had been weaponized against her.
And yet… her kids didn’t think she was stupid.
They came to her every day with their tangled sentences and their uncertainty and confusion, and she had always, always made space for them.
She never laughed at them. She showed them how to be gentle with themselves.
How to reframe the ugly little voices in their heads that said I’m dumb or I’m annoying or I mess everything up.
She had helped them rewrite those thoughts.
What if she did the same for herself?
Fiona opened the app and created a new account.
The username came easily, like it had been waiting in the back of her brain:
@missfionasays
She paused with her finger hovering over the bio section, then typed:
It’s not a flaw, it’s a gift
5th grade teacher, recovering people-pleaser, rebranding kindness as strength.
Her heart beat a little faster as she clicked through setup. She chose a profile picture—a selfie from last fall, sunlight in her hair, her eyes squinting but happy. She looked like someone she almost recognized. Someone who believed in good things.
Her fingers hovered over the keyboard for a second before she began to type.
You don’t have to be perfect to be proud of yourself.
Trying again after something felt hard?
That’s brave. That counts.
Her finger hovered. A dozen worst-case scenarios skittered through her head—Dean seeing it. His friends. Those awful coworkers from countless events. But this wasn’t for them.
This was for Rae. For her students. For herself.
She tapped Post.
Then sat back.
She waited for… something.
Nothing exploded. No cruel comments. No snickering audience. Just a little spinning wheel, and then: Post uploaded.
Fiona exhaled.
She closed her laptop and slid under the covers.
The old shame was still there, curled in her chest like a bruise. But this time, it had something new beside it.
A flicker of pride. A beginning.