2. Nora
NORA
In the car, I keep my face turned toward the window while the driver takes us through streets glazed gold with rain.
My phone sits in my bag.
I want Daniel to call. I do. I hate it, but I do. I want him to step out of that ballroom, realize what happened, and call me before I get home.
The phone doesn't ring.
At home, I take off the navy dress and hang it back in the wardrobe because it was expensive and I'm not a woman who can afford symbolic destruction. Then I wash my face, get into bed, and open a book I don't read.
Daniel comes home at eleven.
I hear his key in the lock, the pause in the hall, the soft clink as he drops his keys into the bowl.
I know the sequence of him so well. Shoes off by the bench.
Jacket over the back of the chair even though there's a hook six inches away.
One hand through his hair. A breath before he comes upstairs.
He stops in the bedroom doorway.
"You left early," he says.
I keep my eyes on the page. "You noticed."
"Nora."
There it is again — my name, heavy with everything he doesn't know how to say.
I close the book.
He comes into the room slowly, unbuttoning his cuffs. He's careful now. Daniel knows how to be when something has gone wrong. The problem is that by the time he notices, I'm usually already bleeding somewhere he can't see.
"I'm sorry about tonight," he says.
I nod. He waits, and I don't help him.
"I should have introduced you earlier."
"Yes."
"And I shouldn't have let the Singapore conversation take over."
"No."
His jaw tightens a little. Not anger. Frustration at himself, maybe.
He sits on the edge of the bed. "Talk to me."
I laugh under my breath, and the sound surprises both of us.
"I've been trying to talk to you for months."
His face goes still. That's when I know we're finally somewhere real.
I set the book on the nightstand. "Do you know what Charlotte said tonight?"
A flicker. "What?"
"She told someone I run a little catering business. Very sweet."
His expression shifts, but not enough. Not in the way I need it to.
"I'm sure she didn't mean--"
"Don't."
The word comes out sharper than I intend, but I don't take it back.
Daniel stops.
I sit up fully, pulling the sheet around my waist because suddenly I feel exposed in my own bedroom.
"Don't tell me what she meant. I know what she meant. I also know what everyone heard."
"Nora, Honey & Rye isn't little."
"Then why does it keep feeling little when I'm standing beside you?"
He doesn't answer that.
"I closed my shop," I say, and my voice shakes on the last word.
I hate that. I hate that I still care enough for my voice to shake.
"I closed it because your life kept getting bigger and our life kept needing someone to stay home.
I told myself it was temporary. I told myself marriage was compromise. I told myself you saw what I gave up."
"I do see it."
"No, you don't." My throat hurts. "You see that I'm sad about it sometimes. You see that I miss it. You don't see that every time I stand in one of those rooms, I feel like I traded a whole version of myself to become a woman nobody bothers to remember."
Daniel goes pale.
Good.
No. Not good. I don't want to hurt him.
That's the worst part of loving someone who has hurt you. You still don't want to hurt them back. Not really.
He reaches for my hand, then stops before touching me. "I didn't know you felt like that."
"I know."
That's the answer and the accusation.
His shoulders drop.
"There's something I need to tell you," he says.
The room changes. I feel it before I understand it — something in his voice, the carefulness, the way he glances at me and then at his hands.
My stomach sinks.
"What?"
He takes one breath. Then another.
"Davis wants me in Singapore."
I don't say anything.
"For how long?" I ask.
Daniel's face breaks just a little. Not enough to stop him.
"Four months," he says. "Maybe five."
The house is quiet around us.
Downstairs, the kitchen drawer still sticks. Daniel said he would fix it in March. It's October now.
I look at my husband.
"Four months," I say.
"Maybe five," he says, softer. Like the honesty helps.
I fold my hands in my lap because they're shaking.
"When?"
"January."
Six weeks. Christmas, then gone.
Daniel leans toward me. "The Linden tower needs me through final phase. There are issues with the upper floors, and Davis thinks if I'm there in person we can close it clean. If we do, the equity package vests early. The partnership track becomes real. The investor payout alone--"
"Stop."
He stops.
I can't hear about money right now. I can't sit in this bed, in this house, with the ghost of my closed bakery sitting between us, and listen to him explain how profitable my loneliness might be.
He swallows.
"I was going to tell you tomorrow."
I almost laugh. Tomorrow. After the gala, after Charlotte, after he had one more night where I stood beside him and smiled correctly and made his life look whole.
"Do you want to go?" I ask.
He doesn't answer quickly enough. That's my answer.
His eyes come back to mine, full of apology. "I think I have to."
No, I think. No, you don't.
He means he's already decided, and now he needs me to survive the decision nicely.
"I need a minute," I say.
I get out of bed before he can reach for me. I take my robe from the chair. My legs feel strange, like the floor has moved slightly and everyone else is pretending it hasn't.
"Nora, please."
I stop at the doorway.
"I stood in that room tonight for nearly an hour," I say. "I waited for you to come back. I need you to understand that I'm tired of waiting in rooms for you, Daniel."
Then I go downstairs.
The kitchen is dark except for the light over the stove. I stand by the counter and open the drawer with the broken runner.
It sticks.
Of course it does.
I pull harder than I need to. The drawer jerks open, silverware clattering.
That's when I start crying.
Not beautifully. Not quietly at first. One hand over my mouth, the other gripping the edge of the counter, trying not to make enough noise for him to hear.
Which is ridiculous.
He's my husband.
He should hear me.
In the back of the drawer, under the tea towels, is a packet of Honey & Rye labels I never threw away. Cream paper, dark green lettering, the little wheat stalk Bex said looked too earnest and I kept anyway. I pull one out and hold it in my palm.
Honey & Rye.
My name, once.
Not Mrs. Welling.
Not Daniel's wife.
Not very sweet.
Mine.
The stairs creak.
Daniel comes down. He stops in the kitchen doorway, barefoot, shirt untucked, face wrecked in the low light.
"I don't know how to do this," he says.
It's not what I expect.
"I don't know how to be what you need and still take this," he says.
That should make me angry. It does. It also breaks my heart.
"Maybe that's the problem," I say. "You keep thinking the question is how to do both."
He looks down at his hands.
I wait for him to argue. He doesn't.
Daniel looks at the label in my hand.
"I know I didn't mean for you to lose that," he says.
"I know."
"That doesn't make it better."
"No."
His throat moves. "I love you."
I press the label flat against my palm until the corner bites.
"I know that too."
The cruelest thing is that I do know. He loves me. He just keeps leaving anyway.
Upstairs, his phone starts ringing.
Neither of us moves. It stops. A second later, it starts again.
Daniel's eyes lift toward the ceiling. I can tell by his face that he knows who it is. Singapore. Davis. Marcus. Charlotte. The future, calling from our bedroom.
He doesn't go to it. Not right away. For three rings, he stays with me. Four. Five.
I watch him make himself stand still.
That should count for something. It does count for something. Just not enough.
"Go answer it," I say.
"Nora--"
"You will anyway."
He turns and goes upstairs.
I stand alone in the kitchen with the Honey & Rye label stuck to my palm and listen to my husband answer the call that's taking him away from me.
The next five and a half weeks are not one long fight.
That would be easier to explain later. Easier to package.
We fought, he left, I broke. Nice and tidy.
But marriage is meaner than that. It makes you eat toast across from the person who is hurting you.
It makes you ask if he wants the blue shirt from the cleaners.
It makes you stand together in a supermarket aisle debating dishwasher tablets while part of you wants to scream, You're leaving me, and we're discussing lemon scent.
Daniel tries. That's the honest part. He really tries.
He comes home earlier twice, which is something until I realize earlier means eight-thirty.
He fixes the kitchen drawer on a Sunday morning without making a speech about it.
He brings me coffee from the place near Welling and remembers oat milk.
He asks about the Linfield order and listens for nearly ten minutes while I talk about shortbread ratios.
I want all of it to mean enough. It doesn't. Because every good thing he does now has a suitcase behind it.
Christmas comes and goes under a layer of careful behavior. His mother, Vivienne, kisses both my cheeks and says, "Singapore will be such an adventure for Daniel," while handing me a gift box from a boutique where the salespeople probably have cheekbones on payroll.
"Yes," I say. "He's very adventurous."
I drink champagne I don't want.
On New Year's Eve, he asks again if I'll come for part of it.
We're in bed. Not touching.
"A month," he says. "Even two weeks. You could come after the February orders."
I stare at the ceiling.
"You know what I hear when you say that?"
"What?"
"I hear you offering me visiting hours in my own marriage."
He doesn't answer for a while.
"That's not what I mean."
"I know."
He turns his head toward me. I feel it more than see it.
"I don't know what to do with you knowing what I mean and still being hurt."
That's the most honest thing either of us has said in days.
"Neither do I."
The night before he leaves, I make soup.
This isn't symbolic. This is because there are leeks in the fridge and a bag of potatoes starting to look tired, and if I don't cook, I'll stand in the middle of the kitchen staring at nothing until I become frightening.
Daniel packs upstairs.
I hear drawers open and close. The wardrobe door. The thump of shoes in a suitcase. Ordinary sounds. Domestic sounds. Sounds that should belong to a holiday or a work trip measured in days, not the beginning of five months where I'll learn the shape of this house without him in it.
The soup is too salty. I eat it anyway.
Daniel comes down around nine. He's changed into a black T-shirt and jeans. His hair is damp from the shower. He looks younger like this, softer around the edges. It's deeply unfair.
He takes a bowl and sits across from me at the kitchen table. Eats too-salty soup without complaint because he's not stupid.
Then he puts his spoon down.
"I hate this," he says.
"I know."
"I hate that I'm hurting you."
"Not enough to stop."
"No," he says. "Not enough to stop."
I appreciate the truth. I hate the truth.
My eyes burn. I look down at my bowl because I can't cry over potato soup. There have to be standards.
There's a clean version of me somewhere, a proud version, who would put the bowl in the sink and go upstairs alone and lock the bathroom door. She would be correct. I respect her deeply.
I'm not her tonight. Tonight I'm angry and lonely and still in love with my husband.
Tonight he leaves in the morning and my body knows it.
My body has known it for weeks. Every time he reaches past me for a mug.
Every time he changes shirts with the bedroom door open.
Every time he comes to bed and keeps a careful inch between us like carefulness is kindness.
I'm sick of careful.
I stand, and Daniel's eyes lift to mine.
There's one second where nothing happens. One bare, electric second where the whole room seems to understand before either of us moves.
Then he stands too.
"Don't be careful with me because you're leaving," I say.
His face changes.
"What do you want?"
That question. God.
My whole body answers before I do. Heat low in my stomach, anger in my chest, grief everywhere.
"I want you to want me enough to stay," I say. "And since you don't, I want you to stop pretending you don't want me at all."