43. Jenna
Jenna
“—and I said to her, Donna, if your Michael wants to park that boat trailer in front of my house all summer, then your Michael can shovel my sidewalk all winter, that’s the exchange rate,” Ma says, refilling my coffee I didn’t ask for and haven’t finished.
“He moved it this morning. So. That’s the Donna situation. ”
“Riveting, Ma.”
“You used to like the Donna updates.”
“I still like the Donna updates.” I wrap both hands around the mug and make myself mean it, because she’s trying.
That’s the thing I keep bumping into, day three of this: my mother, sober, trying—narrating the neighborhood like Scheherazade, cooking enough to feed six, hovering at the edge of my silence with a dish towel and no idea what to do with a daughter who came home broken and won’t say how.
Three days. The house smells like coffee and cleaning products instead of wine, and there’s a serenity prayer on the windowsill above the sink where other mothers keep saints and a list of steps stuck to the fridge.
She hasn’t mentioned them. Neither have I.
We are a family of unexploded conversations, and we set our plates around them.
The doorbell rings at ten past eleven.
“Are you expecting a delivery?” Ma asks, already moving.
“No,” I say, pushing my chair back. The scrape of the wooden legs against the linoleum sounds entirely too loud. “But I have a feeling I know what it is.”
Ma opens the front door, wiping her hands on her dish towel. A man in a dark blue polo stands on the stoop, holding a digital tablet in one hand and wrestling two familiar leather weekenders with the other.
“Delivery for Jenna Pemberton?” the courier asks, looking aggressively bored.
My lungs seize as I stand up. “That’s me.”
My things.
I cross the living room, sign his screen with a finger that only slightly trembles.
“Have a good one,” the guy mutters. He leaves the bags on the mat and heads back to his van.
I stand there staring at the luggage. They look absurdly out of place on the cracked concrete of a Queens porch. Too sleek, too expensive. Too Chicago.
“Do you want me to help you carry them up?” Ma asks softly. She isn’t looking at the bags. She’s looking at my face. She knows a casualty when she sees one.
“I’ve got it,” I say. My voice is perfectly level. The professional armor locks into place, a reflex triggered by the immediate threat of total collapse.
I drag them inside, hefting them onto the couch in the living room. Then I just stare at them.
“We should probably unpack those,” Ma says softly, breaking the quiet.
She steps closer, her fingers nervously twisting the edge of her dish towel.
“You know how men are with packing. He probably just threw all your lovely clothes in there without folding a single thing. If we leave them zipped up too long, everything will get ruined.”
I swallow the sharp, hysterical laugh bubbling at the back of my throat.
Men, generally, might be terrible at packing.
Dominic Cruz is not a general man. Dominic approaches a suitcase the way he approaches a corporate restructuring: with ruthless efficiency and absolute, devastating precision.
I guarantee he didn’t just throw my clothes in.
He probably folded my cashmere with a ruler and lined it with tissue paper.
“I’ll handle it,” I say.
“Let me help, Jenna. We can hang up the blouses—”
“Ma, please. I said I have it.”
The sharpness in my tone makes her flinch, and immediate guilt curdles in my stomach. She’s only trying to help me carry something she can’t even see. I exhale, running a shaky hand through my hair. “Sorry. I just . . . I want to do it myself. Thank you.”
She nods, offering a small, tight smile before retreating to the safety of her kitchen. The sink water turns on—a polite, domestic acoustic shield.
I turn back to the leather weekender. It feels like a bomb waiting to detonate on the floral upholstery. I reach out, my fingers catching the cold metal of the zipper. I pull it along the track, the sound unnervingly loud in the small house.
I fold back the leather flap.
My breath hitches. It’s exactly as I knew it would be.
Every sweater, every blouse, every pair of slacks is perfectly, painstakingly folded.
Smooth edges. Impeccable alignment. The sheer, deliberate care of it feels like a blow to the sternum.
It’s Dominic in textile form—methodical, intentional, impossible to ignore.
My hands are trembling again. I force them to be still, reaching for the smaller front compartment, intending to start small with my chargers and toiletries. I pull the zipper back.
Instead of my makeup bag, my fingers brush against heavy card stock.
I freeze. Slowly, I pull out a thick manila folder. It’s heavy. Official. In the pocket with it is a small, black velvet box. And right beside the box, gleaming against the dark nylon lining, is a solid gold wedding band.
His wedding band.
The air leaves the room. I stare at the ring, the universe narrowing to that single, heavy circle of metal. My thumb traces the edge of the manila folder, and I open it. A bright yellow Post-it note is the first thing I see.
I never wanted to win.
I just wanted you.
You’re free.
The handwriting is his. Sharp, confident, unmistakably Dominic.
I pull the Post-it from the page and the annulment papers stare back at me. On the bottom line, in thick black ink, is his signature. Witnessed by Logan. Final.
He signed them. The man who refused to lose, the man who I was certain would orchestrate a loophole, a fight, a grand theatrical gesture—he simply surrendered. He gave me exactly what I asked for in the beginning.
He undid it.
A sound escapes me—a jagged, broken gasp that I can’t suppress. The hairline cracks in my armor don’t just spread, they shatter completely. I sink onto the floor, clutching my knees to my chest as the first sob tears its way out of my throat.
“Jenna? Baby, what is it—” Ma’s instantly at my side, reading over my shoulder, and I feel the moment she assembles it, the sharp intake, the hand flying to her sternum. “Oh. Oh, honey.”
“It’s fine.” My voice comes out strained. “It’s what I asked for.”
“That bastard,” Ma snaps. “How could he?” Her voice rises as she shifts instantly into battle mode.
“You give them your best years and they just discard you when it gets hard. You can’t trust a single one of them, Jenna.
Always lying, always cheating, always looking for a way out while they make you feel like you’re the one who isn’t enough. ”
“Stop,” I whisper.
“No, I won’t stop! My baby girl is hurting and it’s only one man’s fault. I know how these men operate. They promise you the world and then—”
“Ma, stop.” I say it louder this time, my voice cracking straight down the middle. She goes silent, blinking at me in shock. “Please. Stop.”
I can’t listen to this. I can’t let her rewrite him to fit her narrative of broken, untrustworthy men.
Dominic is none of those things. He didn’t lie.
He didn’t cheat. He didn’t abandon me. He did the absolute most terrifying thing a man like him could do: he surrendered.
I’m the one who ran. I packed my bags in the middle of a thunderstorm because I looked at the man I loved and realized he held the power to destroy me.
I had fallen so deep that one careless word, one shift in his affection, and I would be utterly obliterated.
I was so terrified of the fall that I pushed myself off the ledge.
“I just . . . I need to be alone right now,” I manage, hauling the heavy weekender bags off the couch.
“Jenna, let me make you some tea—”
“I’m fine, Ma. Just give me a minute. Please.”
I grab the folder and the small velvet box, carrying everything up the narrow, carpeted stairs.
My childhood bedroom hasn’t changed. It’s still the same faded floral wallpaper, the same twin bed where I used to lie awake and meticulously plan my escape from this exact house.
Now I’m back, and the same mirror I used to stand in front of, wishing I were anyone but the oversized outsider I was, is now reflecting the adult version of me, circles under my eyes, clutching a marriage’s worth of emotional shrapnel.
I drop the bags on the floor and sink onto the edge of the mattress. My hands are shaking violently as I open the black velvet box.
Two rings sit nestled in the dark silk.
They aren’t just standard wedding bands.
I recognize the subtle curvature of the metal immediately.
They were forged to interlock, explicitly designed to fit flush against the simple gold bands we bought in that tiny shop in Tokyo.
He didn’t want to replace our impromptu beginning. He wanted to build around it.
My hands shake so badly I nearly drop the box.
I carefully lift the smaller ring. It’s a slender gold band, paved with small, brilliant diamonds that catch the overcast Queens daylight, wrapping all the way around in an unbroken circle.
I tilt it, squinting through the blur of my own tears to read the microscopic engraving on the inner band.
To the ends of the earth
A ragged breath tears its way out of my lungs. It isn’t a brand marking me as his. It’s a reminder of what he said to me the last night in Tokyo—that his heart has always been mine and always will be. To the ends of the earth . . .
I slide it against the ring that’s still on my finger and admire it with tear-filled eyes. Then I pick up the larger ring and study it. It’s a simpler, heavier band, meant to nestle against the gold ring he just returned to me in the front pocket of my luggage. I angle the metal to the light.
Not the worst thing
A laugh punches out of my chest, harsh and entirely involuntary, immediately cracking into a violent sob.
It’s our joke. It’s him. The impossible, arrogant billionaire who let me correct him, who practically begged me to hold him accountable, mocking himself just to make me smile.
You don’t engrave a self-deprecating punchline onto a ring for a woman you consider a trophy.
You don’t immortalize a joke for a challenge you’re just trying to conquer. You do it for a partner.
You do it for a wife.
I pick up both of his rings and link them together, twisting them in the light as I shudder out a breath. Very slowly, I slide them both down the middle finger of my right hand and just stare.
“Fuck.”
I pull my knees tight to my chest, balling my hands and the rings against my sternum. The pain is absolute, radiating outward from my ribs until it swallows the entire room.
I ran because I was terrified of what would happen when he finally won me over completely.
I thought I was protecting myself from the inevitable end.
But he didn’t push me. He didn’t trap me.
When I demanded my freedom, he didn’t deploy his lawyers or corner me with his limitless resources.
He packed my bags with a ruler, signed his own defeat, and handed me the exit, wrapping it in the undeniable proof that I was entirely, catastrophically wrong.
He didn’t want to win. He just wanted me.
Me.
I bury my face in my knees, alone in my childhood bedroom, and finally let the ice queen shatter into a million irreparable pieces. I weep until my throat is raw, mourning the beautiful, devastating truth that the only person who truly destroyed my marriage was me.