Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Annie did not tell Nathan about the text.
She told herself it was restraint. By the time she reached their house in Brookline, rain had deepened from a mist into a steady silver sheet, and the yellow glow from the porch lamps made the whole place look warmer than it felt.
Their house had been Nathan’s choice originally, a slate-gray Victorian with a wraparound porch and too many rooms for two people who had once promised they would fill it with noise.
Children had been part of the plan in the hazy, hopeful way people made plans before fertility became a calendar, before sex became timing, before timing became failure, before failure became something neither of them could talk about without choosing their words like lawyers.
Brooke had opinions about the house too, of course.
She had said the kitchen needed opening up. She had found the contractor who built the back deck. She had given Nathan the name of the landscape designer who tore out the overgrown hedges Annie liked because they made the porch feel private.
“You’ll thank me when it doesn’t look like a haunted bed-and-breakfast,” Brooke had said.
Nathan had laughed.
Annie had laughed too, because that was what she did then. Back then she still believed marriage meant there would be time later to establish lines no one else could cross.
The kitchen lights were on when she came in. Nathan stood at the island in his shirtsleeves, tie pulled loose, sleeves rolled to his forearms. His laptop was open beside a half-empty glass of red wine. A takeout bag sat near the sink, still stapled shut.
He looked up. “You’re soaked.”
“It picked up.”
“You should’ve called me. I would have sent a car.”
“I got one.”
He watched her hang her coat on the hook by the mudroom door. The air between them carried the stale residue of last night’s argument. Not loud now. Worse. Polite.
“How was your appointment?” he asked.
Annie’s fingers tightened briefly around the wet wool of her coat.
She turned. “What appointment?”
Nathan hesitated.
There. A fraction of a second. Small, but Annie had become fluent in fractions.
“With Dr. Lane,” he said carefully.
She stared at him. “How did you know I went?”
His face changed at once. “You said you were thinking about it.”
“No. Brooke said I should. You said Brooke thought I should. I never told you I booked anything.”
He closed the laptop halfway. “Annie.”
The sound of her name in that tone made her stomach clench.
“Don’t do that,” she said.
“Do what?”
“Say my name like I’m already being unreasonable.”
“I’m not.”
“How did you know I went?”
Nathan rubbed one hand along the back of his neck. He looked tired. He was always tired now. “Brooke asked if I’d heard from you after your appointment.”
Annie felt the kitchen slide into unnatural clarity: the dark shine of the marble counter, the brass pull on the cabinet drawer, the red smear of wine at the rim of Nathan’s glass.
“Brooke asked,” she said.
“She said you had texted her earlier in the week about maybe going.”
“I did not.”
Nathan frowned. “Maybe she misunderstood.”
“I did not text Brooke about therapy.”
“She probably assumed.”
“How would she know the day and time?”
He looked away.
That was answer enough.
Annie reached into her purse, took out her phone, and pulled up Brooke’s message. She set it on the counter between them.
Nathan looked at the screen.
Thinking of you today. Hope the appointment helped.
He read it once. Then again. Annie waited for the moment when outrage would appear. She waited for him to lift his eyes and say, You’re right. That’s strange. She had imagined that sentence so many times in the cab that it had begun to feel possible.
Instead, he sighed.
“You’re doing the thing again,” he said.
The words hit harder because he sounded sad, not angry.
“The thing,” Annie repeated.
“Taking one message and turning it into proof.”
“It is proof.”
“Of what?”
“That she knew I went. That someone told her.”
“Or she was being supportive.”
“Supportive people don’t mysteriously know private appointment times.”
“She gave you the referral. Maybe Dr. Lane’s office confirmed it through some automatic system.”
Annie laughed because the alternative was screaming. “A therapist’s office confirmed my appointment to my husband’s best friend?”
“I’m not saying that’s what happened. I’m saying there are explanations that aren’t conspiracy.”
“Conspiracy.” She picked up her phone before he could touch it. “You always choose the word that makes me sound insane.”
His jaw flexed. “Because you’re accusing Brooke and a licensed therapist of what, exactly? Coordinating against you? Breaking confidentiality?”
Annie opened her mouth and stopped. Because yes. Because no. Because hearing it said plainly made it sound impossible and nuts. “I’m just saying this doesn’t make sense,” she said.
Nathan softened, and somehow that hurt more. He came around the island. “Annie.”
She stepped back. His hand dropped.
For a moment, she saw the impact of that small movement on his face. He looked wounded, and the worst part was that she wanted to comfort him. Even now. Even with Brooke’s text burning in her hand and Dr. Lane’s smile fixed in her memory, she wanted to make him stop looking hurt.
“I don’t want us like this,” he said.
“Neither do I.”
“Then let Dr. Lane help.”
Annie looked at him. “You trust her?”
“I trust that you need someone who isn’t me.”
The answer was so reasonable that it almost hid the wound inside it. Annie slipped the phone back into her purse. “Did Brooke recommend Dr. Lane to you or to me?”
“To you.”
“Did you know her before?”
“No.”
“Does Brooke?”
“I don’t know.”
“Ask her.”
Nathan closed his eyes briefly. “I’m not interrogating Brooke because you’re upset after one session.”
“One session where the therapist told me not to bring Brooke up for a week.”
“That sounds sensible.”
“Of course it does.”
His mouth tightened again. “What does that mean?”
“It means everyone keeps agreeing that the best way to handle Brooke is for me to be quieter.”
Nathan stared at her for several seconds. “Maybe because when you get louder, things get worse.”
Annie drew in a breath.
He regretted it as soon as he said it. She saw that. His face shifted; his hand lifted slightly toward her, then stopped. “Annie, I didn’t mean?—”
“You did.”
“I meant the pattern. I’m talking about the pattern.”
“The pattern is that Brooke intrudes, I object, and you tell me my objection is the problem.”
“The pattern is that you’re unhappy, and every road leads back to Brooke.”
“Because she keeps standing in the road.”
Nathan’s expression hardened. “I can’t keep doing this tonight.”
That sentence had become his drawbridge. He pulled it up whenever she got too close to something he did not want to examine.
“Fine,” she said. She went upstairs without dinner.
Their bedroom looked untouched. The bed was made because their housekeeper came on Thursdays.
Fresh towels sat folded on the bench near the windows.
A pale blue sweater Brooke had given Annie last Christmas hung over the chair in the corner, where Annie had tossed it after trying it on and discovering it fit perfectly.
Brooke always bought her beautiful gifts.
That was part of the problem. Every gesture had the right shape from a distance.
Annie changed into pajamas and washed her face. In the mirror, she looked pale and furious and faintly embarrassed by both. Her phone buzzed while she was brushing her teeth. For one wild second she thought it would be Brooke. It was an email from Dr. Lane’s office.
Dear Annie,
Thank you for coming in today. Attached are the intake documents for your records, along with the reflective worksheet discussed during session.
Warmly,
Beatrice Lane, PsyD
Annie dried her hands before opening the attachment. The first page was ordinary: consent to treatment, cancellation policy, emergency information. The second was a worksheet with three columns.
Trigger. Thought. Fear.
At the bottom, in Dr. Lane’s neat digital signature, was a single line.
The goal this week is not silence. The goal is observation.
Annie read it twice. The goal is not silence.
She wanted to believe that. She wanted, suddenly and desperately, to be the kind of woman who could walk into therapy suspicious and leave humbled by her own fear.
She wanted the problem to be inside her because that meant it could be fixed without Nathan having to choose.
Without him having to lose anyone. Without Annie having to admit that love did not guarantee protection.
She opened the bathroom drawer and found an old notebook beneath a box of sleep masks. The notebook was from a conference Nathan had attended three years ago, embossed with the logo of Grisham Meridian, the company that had made him wealthy and then made him absent.
She carried it to bed, clicked a pen, and wrote.
Trigger: Brooke knew about appointment.
Thought: Someone told her.
Fear: Nathan trusts her more than me. Dr. Lane may not be safe. I am alone.
The words looked melodramatic in ink. She closed the notebook.
Downstairs, Nathan’s voice drifted faintly through the floorboards. Annie went still. At first she thought he was on a work call. Then she heard the low note in his voice that he used only with people he let past the armor.
“No,” he said. “She’s upstairs.” A pause. “I don’t know. She came home ready for a fight.” Another pause, longer this time.
Annie slid out of bed and crossed to the hallway. The old house carried sound unpredictably. From the top of the stairs, she could hear him in fragments.
“I’m trying.” Then, softer: “I know you are.”
Annie gripped the banister. A floorboard creaked beneath her foot. Nathan’s voice stopped. A few seconds later, the call ended.
She returned to bed before he came upstairs. She lay on her side facing the windows, notebook tucked beneath her pillow like a childish secret.
When Nathan entered the room, he moved quietly. He undressed in the dark, brushed his teeth in the bathroom, and came to bed without touching her.