25. Fracture
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
FRACTURE
Claire
The shrill ring of my phone jerks me awake long before sunrise. Whitney’s name glows on the screen. Overnight staff never call this early unless something has gone wrong.
Beside me, Ethan stirs beneath the covers, letting out a sleepy sigh as I reach for the phone.
“Claire Bennett,” I whisper.
Whitney’s voice is thin and shaken, just above a whisper. Someone vandalized Juniper House overnight. They sprayed graffiti in angry, black slashes across the side of the building.
As she finishes, I’m already throwing back the blankets. “I’ll be there as soon as I can,” I tell her, my words clipped and urgent, before ending the call with a definitive click.
The drive feels longer than usual, every red light and slow turn giving the anger more time to settle into something harder. When I arrive, several staff members are already outside, their hushed voices and grave faces assessing the damage.
The vandalism is lazy but pointed—someone took a can of red paint to the siding and scrawled WHORES across the wall in wobbly, childish letters, the color still wet and dripping like something wounded.
I also note several newly planted flower beds torn apart, the young plants uprooted, and shattered glass from a broken security light glittered across the pavement.
As I walk the property with Whitney, I notice Heidi standing near the front steps. Her face is pale. She’s staring at the graffiti, her gaze fixed with an expression that catches my attention. I excuse myself from the conversation, the murmur of voices fading behind me, and walk over.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
She doesn’t answer right away. Her eyes remain fixed on the defaced wall, as if trying to decipher a hidden message. “What if it were Jake?”
“What makes you think that?”
“I saw him last week at the grocery store.”
“Did he talk to you?”
“He followed me to my car.”
The anger arrives before I can think. “What?” The word is a guttural sound.
“He didn’t do anything.” Her voice is small, defensive.
“Heidi—following you to your car is a serious matter.”
She looks away and focuses on the broken glass on the pavement. “I knew you’d react like this.”
“Because I want you to take this seriously.” My voice is firm now, unwavering.
“He just stood there, staring at me.”
I force myself to take a calming breath, to rein in the panic clawing at me. “You should have told me.”
“I know.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Her eyes wide and trembling. “Because I thought if I said it out loud, it would become real. I could pretend, as long as nobody else knew.”
By Friday, the vandalism investigation is ongoing, and the police make no progress on Heidi’s domestic abuse report.
The house is different with Ethan gone, the silence expanding to fill the space his presence usually occupies. There are no new messages on my phone.
Ellie is ecstatic that Mona is spending the weekend with us.
The unique energy that only thirteen-year-old girls can generate transforms the house within an hour of Mona’s arrival.
Blankets migrate from bedrooms to the living room, and snacks materialize from every kitchen cabinet.
The girls spend twenty minutes debating movie options before settling on one they both talk through incessantly.
After they finish their movie and head upstairs, the house settles into silence.
My gaze drifts to the empty recliner, and then to a framed photo of Ethan and I on the bookshelf—sunburned, laughing on a California beach, his arm around my waist. I trace the glass over his face.
“One day,” he’d said on that splintered dock, “we’re going to have a house with a big porch.
” The photograph blurs, I set it down and press my fingers to my eyes.
I think about our first house and how proud we were. We painted every room ourselves, arguing good-naturedly about colors while eating pizza on unopened boxes. One night, after we’d finally unpacked the kitchen, Ethan pulled me into the middle of the empty room and started dancing.
“There isn’t any music,” I laughed.
“There doesn’t need to be.”
He spun me around on the worn linoleum. “We’re homeowners now,” he said, his voice warm. “I think dancing in the kitchen is required.”
I recall standing in the small master bathroom, the porcelain sink cold beneath my fingertips, staring at a positive pregnancy test. I walked into the living room and handed it to him without a word. He stared at it, then at me. “Are you serious?”
I nodded, my throat tight.
His expression shifted—disbelief, then joy. He pulled me into his arms, holding me so tightly I struggled to breathe.
“We’re having a baby,” he whispered. He didn’t stop smiling for weeks.
My eyes drift back to the photograph on the bookshelf. The younger versions of us, sun-kissed and laughing, smile back at me from behind the glass, unaware of the years ahead—unaware of the challenges we’d face or the life we’d build.
“I miss you,” I whisper into the empty room, the words absorbed by the silence. The only response is the distant, muffled sound of Ellie laughing upstairs.
I know what this is. I’ve read enough articles, seen enough friends’ marriages dissolve to recognize the pattern. But knowing and accepting are different countries, and I’m still at the border, passport in hand, telling myself that winter always turns to spring.