15. Hannah
HANNAH
The dry-erase markers smelled like memory.
I sat at one of the desks in Julia's classroom, sorting a stack of sonnets into neat piles while a classroom full of students argued over a box of sticky notes.
My hand moved in familiar rhythms. The baby shifted inside me, a flutter I barely noticed anymore.
I had been here eight days now, helping Julia with papers and bulletin boards.
It felt like coming home to a place I'd never meant to leave.
Julia was across the room, pinning student poems to the cork strip that ran beneath the windows. The afternoon light caught her dark hair, and she laughed at something one of the students said. I smiled without thinking.
Then I looked down at my hands and saw the bare place on my left ring finger.
The skin there was paler than the rest, a thin stripe where the wedding band used to sit. I had worn it for six years. I had left it on the nursery shelf, and I didn't know where it was now. I turned my hand over, pressing my palm flat against the table.
The emptiness didn't hurt the way I'd thought it would.
I felt whole.
God, that was the strangest thing. I had walked out of my marriage, left the husband I still loved, and somehow I felt more like myself than I had in months. Maybe years. I rubbed my thumb across the bare spot and went back to cutting paper.
"Miss Ashford, can you help me?" A boy with ink on his cheek appeared at my elbow, holding a sticky note like it had personally wronged him.
I laughed. "Sure, Connor. What do we need?"
Before he could answer, the classroom door opened.
I glanced up, expecting another teacher or maybe a student running late for class.
Instead, I saw Sharon from the front office, followed by two of the English department teachers I used to work with.
Behind them came Maria, who taught down the hall from Julia, and then Paul from the department.
They crowded into the doorway, smiling at me.
"We heard you were helping out," Sharon said. She crossed the room and pulled me into a hug before I could stand all the way up. "It's so good to see you back here, Hannah."
Maria was right behind her. "You look amazing. When are you due?"
"February." I felt my face go warm. This was too much attention all at once, too many people looking at me like I was something fragile they were relieved to see in one piece.
I wasn't used to it anymore. In Pierce's world, I had been practically invisible unless I was hosting one of his dinners or keeping his calendar straight.
Julia came over, grinning. "I told them you've been a lifesaver. The bulletin boards actually look professional now."
"They do not," I protested, but I was smiling.
Paul clapped me on the shoulder. "Don't let her downplay it. Julia's bulletin boards usually look like a tornado hit a craft store."
"Hey," Julia said, but she was laughing.
I was in the middle of that—warmth and teasing and people who actually wanted me there—when I heard heels on the tile floor outside the classroom.
Sharp, quick clicks that didn't belong to anyone who worked at the school.
I knew that sound. I had heard it in the hallways of Pierce's office building, trailing behind me at charity galas.
Sienna Tatum stepped through the doorway.
She looked like she had dressed for a magazine spread, all polished edges and confidence. Her hair was perfect. Her dress probably cost more than I used to make in a month of teaching. She scanned the room like she was evaluating it for purchase, and when her eyes landed on me, she smiled.
It wasn't a kind smile.
"Hannah," she said, like we were old friends. "I didn't realize you were working here now."
The room went quiet. Sharon and Maria stepped back slightly, confused. Julia moved closer to me, her hand brushing my elbow. I could feel everyone looking between us, trying to figure out what was happening.
I stood up. My pulse kicked, but I kept my face blank. "Sienna."
She walked farther into the room, her heels still clicking, and I wanted to tell her to stop, that she didn't belong here. This was my place. Not hers. But I just stood there with sticky notes stuck to my sweater and waited.
"This is sweet," Sienna said, gesturing at the classroom like it was a hobby I'd picked up to pass the time. "Playing teacher again. I guess it's good to have something to do."
I felt the words land, small and sharp. Around me, I could sense the teachers shifting. Julia's eyes narrowed. Maria glanced at me, eyebrows raised.
"What are you doing here, Sienna?" My voice came out colder than I meant it to, but I didn't apologize.
She tilted her head, still smiling. "I was in the area. I thought I'd stop by and see how you were doing. Pierce mentioned you'd been gone for a while, and I was worried."
Liar. The word sat on my tongue, but I didn't say it. Pierce wouldn't have told her where I was. He didn't know I was helping at the school. He didn't know anything except that I'd left.
"I'm fine," I said.
"Are you?" Sienna's eyes dropped to my stomach, then back to my face. "It must be hard, being out here all alone. Especially now."
I wanted to tell her to leave. I wanted to ask Julia to call the front desk and have security walk her out. But I stood there, frozen, because I didn't know what she was doing and I hated not knowing.
"Why are you really here?" I asked.
Sienna's smile didn't waver. She took another step closer, and I smelled her perfume—something expensive.
"I thought you should know," she said quietly, like she was doing me a favor. "Pierce and I are together."
The words didn't make sense at first. I heard them, but they sat in my head like a foreign language I hadn't learned yet. Together. Pierce and Sienna. Together.
"You're lying," I said.
"I'm not." She sounded so sure, so calm. "I know this is hard to hear, Hannah, but it's the truth. We've been seeing each other for a while now. I didn't want to say anything before, but now that you're gone, there's no point in hiding it."
Behind me, someone—Maria, maybe—made a soft, shocked sound. I felt Julia's hand close around my wrist, steadying me. My throat went tight. My stomach flipped, hard, and for a second I thought I might be sick right there in front of everyone.
"He wouldn't," I said, but my voice came out too thin.
Sienna shook her head, almost pitying. "You saw us at his office. I know you did, because he told me you were there. That wasn't just work, Hannah. It hasn't been just work for months."
I remembered the office. I had gone there with a travel mug of tea. And I'd seen Sienna standing too close to him, her hand on his arm, laughing at something I wasn't part of while Pierce sat with his tablet. I'd left without saying a word, and gone home.
"That doesn't mean—" I started, but she cut me off.
"He missed your prenatal appointments because he was with me."
I felt the ground tilt under my feet. That was a guess. It had to be. But it landed too close to the truth to be a guess. Pierce had missed my appointments. I had believed there was a reason because I wanted to believe him, because I didn't know how to do anything else.
"Stop," I said.
Sienna didn't stop. "I'm sorry, Hannah. I really am. But you deserve to know the truth."
I looked at her, standing there in her expensive dress, her perfect hair, her smile that didn't reach her eyes. She wasn't sorry. She wasn't even pretending to be sorry. She was enjoying this.
I wanted to scream at her. I wanted to throw her out of the classroom and tell her she was a liar and a fake and that Pierce would never do this to me. But I couldn't, because there was a part of me—small and vicious and growing—that wondered if she was right.
"Sienna," I said, flat and low.
Beside me, Julia's hands had closed into fists. I saw it out of the corner of my eye, the way her fingers curled tight at that name. She didn't say anything, but I felt her fury like heat coming off a stove.
I took a breath. Then another. I made my voice flat and cold, the way I used to sound when I was telling a student they couldn't leave until they'd finished their work.
"Leave."
Sienna blinked. "Hannah?—"
"Leave."
For a second, I thought she might argue. But then she smiled again, smaller this time, like she'd gotten what she came for. She turned and walked back toward the door, her heels clicking on the tile. She didn't look back. She didn't apologize. She didn't say she was lying.
She just left.
The room was silent.
Sharon was the first to move. She came over and put a hand on my shoulder, gentle, and said something about needing to get back to the office.
The others filtered out after her, murmuring quiet goodbyes, leaving me and Julia alone with a classroom full of students who had stopped writing to stare at us.
Julia sent them back to their seats with their reading and asked them to give us a minute. Then she turned to me.
"Hannah—"
"I'm fine," I said.
"You're not."
I wasn't. My hands were shaking. My chest felt tight, like someone had wrapped a band around my ribs and pulled. Sienna's perfume was still in the room, hanging in the air like smoke, and I wanted to open every window and door until it was gone.
"I need to talk to Pierce," I said.
Julia's expression went carefully neutral. "Okay."
"I need to hear it from him. Not from her." I looked at Julia, willing her to understand. "I have to know if she's telling the truth."
"She's not," Julia said fiercely. "You know she's not."
I wanted to believe that. God, I wanted to believe it so badly it hurt. But Sienna had known about the office. She'd known about the appointments. She'd known things she shouldn't have known unless someone told her, and the only person who could have told her was Pierce.
"I have to go," I said.
Julia nodded. She didn't try to stop me. She just pulled me into a hug, quick and tight, and then let me go.
I grabbed my coat and my bag and walked out of the classroom, past the front desk, past the bulletin board I'd helped Julia hang last week.
The hallway smelled like floor cleaner and old cafeteria lunches.
My footsteps echoed on the tile. I pushed through the double doors and stepped outside into the cold October air.
My car was parked at the far end of the lot. I walked toward it, fishing my keys out of my bag with hands that still wouldn't stop shaking. I got in, locked the doors, and sat there for a long moment with my hands on the wheel.
Sienna was lying. She had to be. Pierce was neglectful, he was dismissive, he waved off my worries like they didn't matter—but he wouldn't cheat. He wouldn't do that.
Would he?
I started the car.
The road home was one I had driven for years. I knew every turn, every pothole, every stretch where the trees crowded close to the pavement. But today it felt different. Longer. Like I was driving toward something I didn't want to reach.
At first, I tried not to believe her.
Sienna was a liar. She wanted Pierce for herself, wanted the life I'd built, the home I'd kept running, the place at his side that I'd earned by giving up everything else. She was cruel and calculating, and this was exactly the kind of thing she would say to hurt me.
Pierce loved me. He'd married me. He'd told me, over and over, that the marriage was fine, that I was worrying too much, that everything would settle down once the baby came and things got easier.
He wouldn't betray me.
But.
The office scene replayed itself in my head, uninvited. Sienna's hand on his arm. The way he'd sat there with his tablet while she laughed. The way he hadn't pulled away.
The missed appointments. The late nights. The dinners where he barely looked at me because he was on his phone, answering emails, dealing with something that couldn't wait.
The nursery he didn't care about.
The marriage he thought was fine.
Fine.
God, I hated that word.
I gripped the steering wheel tighter, my knuckles going white. The road blurred in front of me, and I blinked hard to clear it. I wasn't crying. I wouldn't cry. Not over this. Not until I knew for sure.
But somewhere along that road, the certainty I'd been holding onto started to crack.
What if Sienna wasn't lying?
What if she was telling the truth, and I had been too blind to see it?
What if I'd spent six years loving a man who didn't love me back the same way, and I'd been the only one who didn't know?
The thought sat in my chest like a stone.
I kept my eyes on the road and my hands on the wheel, and I drove on toward the house I shared with Pierce.
I had to talk to Pierce.
I had to hear him say it wasn't true.
But I was terrified—absolutely terrified—that he wouldn't.