10. Chapter Ten
Chapter Ten
Wendy
Two weeks after Wendy published her new episode, the guesthouse no longer looked like a place where she was hiding.
The spare room contained an adjustable microphone arm, a secondhand desk that her mother had helped her move from the main house, and a corkboard covered with recording notes.
The thick blankets still hung along one wall to soften the sound, but the cables had been tied into neat loops.
Printed listener letters filled two trays.
On a calendar, she’d written down recording work, follow-up calls, and one careful question in pencil: Clients?
Her tea cooled beside her laptop. Again, the number in her inbox was higher than before.
Some messages came from people who’d listened to the podcast before she abandoned it.
Others came from new listeners who’d found the return episode through cut videos of Wendy talking about cumulative harm.
They wrote about jobs abandoned for a spouse, years of small dismissals, and the shame of needing distance from someone they still loved.
More than one person said Wendy had given them words for a pain they’d never been able to defend.
She read those messages twice.
The interview requests needed less time for her to decide what she wanted to do.
“We’d want the discussion centered on reclaiming identity,” a television producer told her on a Zoom call. “Your clinical perspective is what makes this more than another celebrity story.”
Wendy looked at the questions the woman had sent before the call. Three concerned her work, and nine concerned Hunter, Serena, and whether Wendy planned to file for divorce.
“Would you agree in writing not to ask about my marriage?” Wendy asked.
The producer’s pause was brief but clear. “We can’t promise not to address the reason viewers are invested.”
“Then you aren’t invested in my clinical perspective.”
“Wendy, this is a chance to control the story.”
She’d heard that promise from too many people who wanted to own the narrative.
“No,” she said. “It’s a chance to give you access I’ve already said isn’t available. Thank you for your time.”
She ended the call before the woman could make privacy sound like a missed opportunity.
The next offer came from a company that wanted to sponsor a series on rebuilding after public betrayal. Their proposed ad copy used the phrase from heartbreak to healing and included a request for “personal authenticity.” Wendy declined it.
She moved an inquiry from a professional education group into a folder marked Consider, along with three referrals from therapists who knew her work before she became useful as a headline.
Before closing the inbox, she answered the professional group.
Their request focused on how clinicians could help clients name a harmful pattern without pushing them toward either separation or reconciliation.
No one had asked for a comment about Hunter, and no one had used his name to explain why Wendy mattered.
She wrote that she was open to discussing the program if her private life remained outside of it.
Then she opened a blank page and wrote down what returning to clinical work might look like.
Two remote clients at most. No one connected to the music business, no one seeking private details about her marriage.
An outside referral process. The right to stop if the work began taking more from her than she could safely give.
The rules looked severe until she remembered how easily one exception had once become a whole life.
Wendy put down her pen and rubbed the tender space between her eyes. Work had clean edges. A request came in, she decided whether it fit, and she answered. Grief had no such order.
Her and Hunter’s anniversary had passed several days earlier.
Not their wedding anniversary. This one belonged to a rust-red truck with open windows, an empty tank, and rain pouring over two broke twenty-year-olds who had no reason to feel lucky and somehow did.
Every year since, she and Hunter had marked the night with cheap Chinese takeout.
They’d eaten it from cartons in bad motels, private jets, rented houses, and once, on the floor of an empty arena because a storm had trapped the crew inside.
This year, Wendy had opened the food order on her phone and stared at the familiar menu. Hunter always stole the last dumpling after claiming he didn’t want any. She always ordered an extra one and acted surprised when he took it for himself.
She’d closed the app without buying food.
No message had come from him, no email, no call from another number. Nothing had been delivered to her parents’ house. No assistant had contacted her parents, and no public dedication had appeared for fans to carry back to her. Hunter had honored the block in every way she could measure.
She’d slept badly anyway.
Part of her had feared he’d force his way through the only boundary she’d managed to set. Another part had watched her phone as if silence might become proof that the night still mattered. She felt safer because he hadn’t reached for her and abandoned because he hadn’t tried.
Both feelings were unfair. Both were true.
Industry reports said the joint tour had been canceled, and the campaign painting Serena as his muse had stopped.
The planned duet was gone from the release calendar without a public explanation.
Hunter hadn’t said anything about their marriage.
She didn’t know whether his choices meant he finally understood, whether the leaked video had made the campaign impossible, or whether Serena had walked away first.
The news mattered. It just didn’t answer the questions keeping her up at night. The song meant for their anniversary now belonged publicly to Serena and privately to no one.
Wendy turned back to the listener messages. Pride warmed her when she read them. So did relief. Her work had survived the scandal. Maybe it had survived her years of neglect too.
She knew professional success could become a prettier way to avoid pain. Hunter had used work that way until their marriage broke under it. Wendy wouldn’t praise herself for doing the same thing just because her reasons sounded healthier.
Her stomach tightened.
She breathed through the nausea and reached for the crackers she’d started keeping on her desk.
Since the day she published the first episode, she’d cut her coffee to one cup, eaten breakfast even when it took effort, and stopped working through lunch.
The sickness still came. Sometimes it faded after she had some food, other times a single bite made it worse.
Stress, she reminded herself. A body could take its time leaving a crisis.
The clock on her laptop showed that she’d missed lunch by twenty minutes.
Wendy saved her notes and went into the kitchen.
Her mother had left a covered dish of rice, vegetables, and roasted chicken in the refrigerator.
Wendy had eaten it the night before without trouble.
She put a serving into the microwave and leaned against the counter while it heated.
The first warm smell reached her. Saliva flooded her mouth. Her skin went hot, then cold.
Wendy slapped one hand over her mouth and ran. She reached the bathroom just before she threw up. The force of it dropped her to her knees. When there was nothing left, her body kept trying, hard enough to pull tears from her eyes. She stayed bent over the toilet until the shaking eased.
A knock came from the patio door.
“Wendy?” her mom called. “It’s me.”
Wendy rested her forehead against her arm. “Bathroom,” she shouted.
Her mother’s footsteps crossed the sitting room. She stopped outside the open door instead of rushing in.
“Oh, honey. Are you all right?”
“I don’t know,” Wendy whined.
She sat back against the tub. The tile felt cold through her clothes. Her mother stepped into the bathroom and took in the damp hair at Wendy’s temples and the tears she hadn’t bothered to wipe away.
“Was it the food?” her mom asked. “I can make something else.”
“The food was fine.”
“Have you been eating?”
“Regular meals. Less coffee. More sleep when I can get it.”
“And you’re still nauseated?”
“It comes and goes.”
“How often?”
“Mom.”
“That’s not an answer.” The woman lowered herself to the floor across from Wendy, leaving space between them. “How often?”
“Most mornings. Some afternoons. Strong smells make it worse.”
Her mother’s face changed so slightly that anyone else might’ve missed it. Wendy didn’t.
“Don’t,” she said.
“I haven’t said anything,” her mom defended herself.
“You thought it.”
The woman folded her hands in her lap. “When did you have your last period?”
“Stress can delay it.”
“It can.”
“I haven’t been sleeping well. I left my husband. I restarted my show… My body doesn’t need another explanation.”
“It might not.” Her mother’s voice stayed gentle. “When was it?”
Wendy reached for the answer and found nothing certain.
She used to track her cycle without thinking.
After the concert, dates had turned into a blur of the song, the leaked video, packing, driving, and trying to breathe through the next hour.
Every change in her body had felt like one more shape grief took.
She stood too fast, caught the sink, and went for her phone in the studio. Her mother followed her. Wendy opened the calendar. She counted backward once, then again, slower. Her focus narrowed to the numbers.
“No,” she whispered.
Her mother waited.
“I’m more than two weeks late.”
Saying it didn’t make the idea real. It made everything else less solid.
“You don’t know yet,” her mom said.
“Stress can do that.”
“Yes.”
“And nausea can be stress.”
“Yes.”
Wendy looked at her mother. “You’re agreeing too easily.”
“Would you rather I argue?”
A laugh caught in Wendy’s throat and came out close to a sob.
“We can get a test, or we can wait,” her mother said. “Your choice.”