CHAPTER FIVE
Asha found the video on Sunday. Not the pictures. Not the cake. Not Portia dancing on my temporary island with a champagne bottle in one hand and a cordless drill in the other.
The video.
Someone had recorded my toast, cut out everything I said about the good years, and posted the part where I admitted I had mistaken endurance for commitment.
By Sunday morning, it had been shared more than four thousand times under the caption: WHEN A GROWN WOMAN FINALLY CHOOSES HERSELF.
I hated it on sight. The words were not false; they were mine, and strangers had turned them into a caption.
Asha stood in the center of my unfinished living room with her coat still on, phone held out like evidence.
“Did you know this was online?”
“No.”
“You don’t follow Cousin Shelly?”
“I muted Cousin Shelly during election season.”
“Mom.”
“I didn’t know.”
She lowered the phone. “People in Dad’s office saw it. His girlfriend saw it.”
I flinched at the word girlfriend, though the woman had been in his life long enough to deserve a title.
“What did your father say to you?”
“He didn’t have to say anything. He sounded…” Asha stopped.
“Sounded what?”
“Hurt.”
The instinct to defend him rose before I could kill it. Terrence had been my husband longer than Asha had been alive. Protecting his image had become muscle memory. Even after he gave me reasons not to, I found myself editing the truth so other people could keep loving him comfortably.
“He can be hurt,” I said. “That doesn’t mean I did something wrong.”
“I didn’t say you did.”
“You came over here with the video pulled up.”
“Because it’s embarrassing.”
“For who?”
“All of us.”
The words hit harder than I expected.
I sat on the arm of the covered sofa. “Tell me what part embarrasses you.”
Asha stared at me. I waited. She had Terrence’s eyes when she was angry and my habit of folding her lips in before she cried.
“People are in the comments calling him a narcissist and saying you wasted your life,” she said. “They don’t know him. They don’t know us.”
“You’re right.”
“And you’re just letting it stay up.”
“I didn’t post it.”
“Tell Shelly to delete it.”
“I will ask her.”
“Ask?”
“Yes, ask. I’m not gonna pretend I didn’t say what I said because strangers decided to use it for content.”
Asha looked away.
I softened my voice. “Baby, I’m sorry you got pulled into this.”
“I’m always pulled into it.”
There it was again. Not accusation for the sake of hurting me. A truth she had been carrying.
I got off the sofa. “Sit down.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Then stand, but don’t leave yet.”
She rubbed her forehead. “I’m not trying to make this about me.”
“It is about you too.”
That seemed to surprise her. I moved closer but did not touch her. Asha had always hated being hugged while she was angry. She said it made her feel trapped into forgiving too soon.
“I should’ve made sure nobody recorded,” I said. “I was thinking about finally having a night that belonged to me. I wasn’t thinking about what it would feel like for you to see people celebrating the end of your parents.”
Her eyes filled. “I am glad you left.”
The words came out cracked. I stayed quiet.
She wiped beneath one eye with the side of her finger. “I used to hear y’all not talking.”
That sentence hurt more than if she had said she heard us fight.
“What do you mean?”
“The house would be so quiet. Dad would be downstairs watching TV. You’d be upstairs doing work. Sometimes I’d come home from school and y’all had been in the same house all day, but it felt like nobody was there.”
I sat down because my knees needed it.
Asha looked at me then. “I knew about the other woman before you told me.”
“How?”
“His phone connected to my car one day.”
I closed my eyes.
She continued before I could apologize for something I had not done. “He got a text. I didn’t read all of it. I knew enough.”
“When was this?”
“Before Thanksgiving. That year you made everybody wear matching pajamas.”
Two years ago. I remembered that Thanksgiving. Terrence carved the turkey. Portia spilled wine on the rug. Asha fell asleep on my shoulder during a movie. I had thought I was protecting her. She had been protecting me from knowing she knew.
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Why didn’t you?”
The question sat between us. I had no good answer.
“I was ashamed,” I said. “Not of you. Of what I had accepted.”
Asha’s face changed.
I held up a hand before she could comfort me. “That’s not yours to fix. I’m telling you because I don’t want us lying to each other just to keep the room comfortable.”
She nodded, but slowly.
“I’ll call Shelly,” I said. “The video comes down. Not because I’m ashamed of leaving, but because you shouldn’t have to watch strangers dissect your family.”
“Okay.”
“And your father’s feelings are his to handle. You can love him without carrying them for him.”
“I’m trying.”
“You say that, but you answer every time he sends a sad little text.”
A reluctant smile touched her mouth. “He uses periods when he’s depressed.”
“He has always weaponized punctuation.”
She laughed through the last of her tears. I opened my arms then. She came into them hard enough to make me step back. For a moment, she was five again, furious because her first day of kindergarten had ended and I had not warned her school happened every weekday.
“I don’t want y’all back together,” she said into my shoulder.
“Neither do I.”
“I just want him to be okay.”
“I want that too.”
It was true. Terrence had hurt me. That did not mean I wanted him destroyed.
I only wanted him outside the life he no longer had permission to manage.
Asha left two hours later after helping me choose a light fixture for the powder room.
I called Shelly, who apologized, deleted the video, and spent ten minutes cursing the person who had downloaded and reposted it.
The internet kept what it wanted. By late afternoon, the house was quiet again.
I stood in the kitchen reviewing the revised schedule when a knock sounded at the front door.
I checked the new camera before I opened it. Terrence. He stood on the porch in a gray sweatsuit, looking less polished than he had on Thursday. Tired. Human. I almost did not open the door. Then I remembered Asha’s face. I stepped outside and closed the door behind me.
“You can’t keep showing up,” I said.
“I came to talk about our daughter.”
“She was here.”
“I know. She called me after.”
Of course she had.
Terrence shoved his hands into his pockets. “She’s taking this hard.”
“So are we.”
“You look fine.”
I glanced down at my black sweater and jeans. “What does fine look like?”
“You threw a party.”
“I also cried in my car after court. Both things can be true.”
His jaw worked. For the first time since he arrived, I saw past my anger.
He looked older than he had during the divorce.
Not physically. Uncertain. Terrence had always known his place in my life.
Even when he neglected it. Even when he risked it.
He believed the position would remain available because it had for so long.
Now he was standing on my porch with no role except Asha’s father and my former husband.
He did not know how to be either one without reaching for the authority he had lost.
“I didn’t ask the cabinet company to cancel anything,” he said. “I asked them to hold the order.”
“You told them you had a financial interest.”
“I did for twenty years.”
“Not in this house.”
“You used settlement money.”
“My settlement money.”
He looked away toward the street. “That man doesn’t know you.”
“Neither does the woman you’re sleeping with, but I haven’t called her furniture store.”
His eyes snapped back to mine. “That was different.”
“Because you chose it?”
“I’m trying to tell you I’m sorry.”
“You’re doing a terrible job.”
He let out a breath. “I’m sorry I stepped into something that wasn’t mine.”
The apology sounded dragged over gravel, but it was an apology.
I nodded once. “Thank you.”
“That’s it?”
“What were you expecting?”
“I don’t know. Maybe for you to stop looking at me like I’m some stranger.”
“You are becoming one.”
He flinched. I hated that part of myself still noticed.
Terrence looked through the glass panel beside the door, into the house. “You really keeping those green cabinets?”
“Yes.”
“You always hated green.”
“No. You hated green.”
His eyes came back to me. For a second, the whole marriage was there.
Not the cheating. Not the court papers. Something smaller and more painful.
How many things had he mistaken about me because I stopped correcting him?
A black pickup pulled up along the curb.
Warren got out carrying a laser measure and a narrow black case.
His gaze moved from Terrence to me, then to the closed door behind us.
He did not hurry. He did not posture. He walked up the path like a man arriving for the appointment on his calendar.
“Afternoon,” he said.
Terrence’s shoulders stiffened. “You work Sundays now?”
“When the client schedules it.”
“I didn’t schedule him,” I said.
Warren looked at me. “You asked for the fireplace measurement before the cabinet release.”
I had. In an email sent Friday.
Today had been the only opening in the fabrication schedule.
“Right,” I said. “I forgot.”
Terrence gave a short laugh with no humor in it. “Already forgetting dates with the contractor?”
Warren’s face stayed blank. Mine did not.
“You need to go,” I said.
“Nadine—”
“Now.”
He looked at Warren as if waiting for him to react. Warren unlocked the tool case. That dismissal bothered Terrence more than aggression would have.
“I’ll call Asha later,” he said.
“Call her because you want to talk to her. Don’t use her to send messages to me.”
His mouth tightened. Then he walked to his car. I waited until he drove away before opening the door. Warren stayed on the porch.
“You can come in.”
“Do you want me here?”
The question made me pause. He had an appointment. A key. A contract that gave him access during approved work hours. Still, he asked.
“Yes.”
He stepped inside. I closed the door and leaned against it for a second.
Warren set the measuring case on the floor. “You want to reschedule?”
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
“I need people to stop asking me if I’m sure every time I make a decision.”
He nodded. “Fireplace is in the front room.”
That was all. No lecture about boundaries. No comment about Terrence. No worried expression inviting me to explain my pain. He measured the fireplace opening while I sat on the covered sofa and watched.
“You can ask,” I said after a few minutes.
He kept his attention on the laser. “Ask what?”
“What that was about.”
“I know what it was about.”
“You heard maybe three sentences.”
“I’ve heard enough men argue ownership.”
I looked at him.
He wrote a number on his tablet.
“You think that’s what he was doing?”
“I think he’s trying to find a place to stand in a house that isn’t his.”
The accuracy of it unsettled me.
“He apologized,” I said.
“That’s good.”
“You don’t sound impressed.”
“Not my apology.”
Again, he left the space where it belonged.
I stood and walked toward the fireplace. “Asha saw the party video.”
“The one online?”
“You saw it?”
“Milan sent it to me.”
I wanted the floor to open.
“What did she say?”
“That you looked pretty.”
“Nothing else?”
“She asked if that was your real kitchen.”
I laughed despite myself. “It is not a kitchen yet.”
“She noticed.”
Warren finished entering the measurement.
“I had it taken down,” I said. “The video.”
He looked at me. “You regret what you said?”
“No.”
“Then why?”
“My daughter.”
He nodded once, as if that was enough reason.
“She knew about the affair before I did,” I said.
His expression changed slightly.
“She was nineteen. She kept it to herself because she didn’t want to hurt me.”
“That’s too much for a child.”
“She wasn’t a child.”
“She was yours.”
The sentence broke something loose in me.
I looked away toward the front windows. “I thought I hid the bad parts.”
“Kids don’t need details to feel a room.”
“You always know exactly what to say?”
“No.”
“It’s irritating when you do.”
“I’ll work on being worse.”
I smiled. He packed the laser into its case.
“You’re done?”
“Yes.”
“That took five minutes.”
“You hired me because I’m efficient.”
“I thought it was because Portia liked your proposal.”
“Portia asked whether I was single during the first meeting.”
My mouth fell open. “She did not.”
“She wrote it on the back of the material list.”
I covered my face. “I’m going to kill her.”
“Wait until the kitchen is finished.”
I lowered my hands and found him watching me. Not staring. Watching. The room felt smaller.
“Are you?” I asked.
“Am I what?”
“Single.”
His eyes stayed on mine. “Yes.”
The answer moved through me slowly. I should have made a joke. Changed the subject. Asked about the fireplace surround.
Instead, I said, “Me too.”
“I heard.”
The corner of my mouth lifted. “Everybody heard.”
Neither of us moved. Then his phone rang inside his coat pocket. He stepped back to answer it, and the air returned to the room.
“Mercer.”
He listened for a moment, his expression sharpening.
“When did you find it?”
A pause.
“Don’t remove anything else. I’ll be there in twenty.”
He ended the call.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Cedric opened the dining-room wall for the new electrical run.”
“And?”
“He found rot at the rear support.”
My stomach tightened. “How bad?”
“I don’t know yet.”
He picked up his case.
I followed him to the door. “Tell me the damn truth when you do.”
“I will.”
“Even if it costs a lot.”
“It probably will.”
I groaned.
His hand paused on the lock. “You told me to tell the truth.”
“I didn’t say I had to enjoy it.”
“No. You didn’t.”
He left, and I stood inside my half-built house listening to the deadbolt slide into place. The thing growing between us was not romance yet. It was trust. That scared me more.