23. Beau
BEAU
The next morning, April's message arrives while I am standing at the kitchen counter in the apartment.
She had a girl. Both doing well. Mark was with her. Please don't answer Celeste if she reaches out tonight.
I type congratulations, then erase it. April did not contact me to create another private channel. She gave me one fact because I had been present in the earlier crisis.
Thank you for letting me know. I will not contact her.
I send the message and block April's number too.
The action feels harsher than it is. Boundaries did not feel cruel when Heidi trusted me to have them. They feel cruel now because I spent months teaching everyone, including myself, that access was kindness.
I am relieved. I am also angry that relief still travels through the same channel that damaged my marriage.
I send Heidi the factual news about the birth and nothing about what I deserve for staying away.
Heidi answers my message with a single word.
Good.
I read it as relief for the baby, not an invitation to discuss Celeste. I put the phone away.
At noon, my aunt calls to tell me she has heard about the birth and thinks I should send flowers.
“I won't.”
“You were friends.”
“I hid the friendship from my wife. There is no harmless gesture left between Celeste and me.”
“A baby is innocent.”
“Yes. The baby has parents and family who can welcome her. She does not need flowers from me.”
My aunt starts to argue. I end the call politely and return to the meeting I left to answer it.
At work, I formalize the changes I began after the public statement. Clients receive named project leads. After-hours calls rotate. The operations director can commit company resources without waiting for me. No employee has to perform a crisis to receive authority.
Celeste posts two days later. She publishes selected lines from our eight months of messages, enough to prove tenderness and conceal every boundary I failed to state. The county begins reading my marriage again.
The first screenshot is from March.
Sometimes I think you are the only person who remembers who I was before all this.
My answer appears beneath it.
I remember.
The crop ends there. It does not show the next line, where Celeste asks whether I remember the house we planned, or my refusal to give her a direct answer.
The second screenshot contains a photograph of the river. The third shows a message I sent after midnight: Call if you cannot settle. Two more carry the permissions I should never have given: Call when you get there. You can always reach me.
Each one is mine.
I feel no relief in the missing context. The full thread proves I encouraged what the crops imply.
I call Heidi before sending the file.
“She posted messages,” I say.
Silence.
“Which ones?”
I tell her. I do not say they look worse than they are.
“Send me everything around them.”
“I already exported it.”
Her breath catches. I hear what it costs her to need evidence from me again.
“I'm sorry,” I say.
“Send it.”
I do.
That evening, the selected screenshots spread faster than my statement did. One client asks if I have been financing Celeste's household. I answer the business question and refuse the invitation to describe either woman.
Before leaving, I check that every image contains the full date and preceding question. I include the messages that make me look worst, especially the ones Celeste did not publish.
The operations director appears in my doorway.
“Do you need to go?” he asks.
The old answer rises automatically. I am always needed somewhere. I can always find a room that changes when I enter it.
“No,” I say. “Heidi has the information. She did not ask me to come.”
He nods and leaves.
I remain at the desk until the workday ends, not because staying is noble, but because nobody has asked me to turn another person's pain into my assignment.
Afterward, I turn off comments and go to the apartment, where no one is waiting to tell me honesty should feel better.