Chapter 4 #3
Annie looked at him.
He swallowed.
“I told her I felt like everything I did was wrong. If I was hopeful, you thought I didn’t understand.
If I was grieving, you thought I had given up.
If I tried to touch you, I was pressuring you.
If I stopped trying, I was rejecting you.
” His voice roughened. “I don’t say that to punish you. I was lost.”
Annie looked down at her wedding ring.
She remembered that winter. She remembered Nathan sitting on the bathroom floor beside her while grieved. She remembered hating his helplessness because it mirrored her own. She remembered turning from him in bed because she could not bear comfort from someone whose body had not betrayed him.
“I was lost too,” she said.
“I know.”
“No,” she said. “You didn’t. You went to Brooke instead.”
He nodded once.
“She told me to give you space,” he said.
“At first, that sounded right. Then space became distance. She told me not to take your anger personally. Then that became treating your anger like it had nothing to do with me. She sent articles. She suggested language. She said I should think about what life would look like if we couldn’t find our way back. ”
Annie closed her eyes.
“She used the phrase ‘emotional exit plan,’” he said.
Annie opened her eyes.
“When?”
“Last year.”
“Before or after our anniversary trip?”
His face answered before his mouth did.
“Before,” he said.
Annie remembered that trip with sudden, vicious clarity.
Nantucket in September. Brooke had booked the inn because she knew the owner and got them upgraded.
Brooke had sent a list of restaurants. Brooke had texted Nathan twice during dinner the first night, and Annie had made herself smile because she was trying so hard to be easy.
They had made love the second night for the first time in three months.
Annie had cried afterward in the dark because she thought they were finding each other again.
But Nathan had been carrying the phrase emotional exit plan in his back pocket.
She stood.
Nathan rose too, then stopped when she looked at him.
“I need air,” she said.
“I’ll go.”
“No. I need you to stay here and write.”
“Write?”
“Everything you remember.”
He looked toward the door, then back at her. “Where are you going?”
“For a walk.”
“It’s dark.”
“I’m aware.”
“I don’t want you out there alone after Brooke?—”
Annie laughed softly. “You do not get to use Brooke as a reason to restrict me tonight.”
The shame on his face was immediate. “You’re right,” he said again.
She hated that too. She hated how ready he was now, when readiness yesterday might have spared them so much.
Annie picked up her coat and bag. At the door, she paused. “Nathan.”
He looked at her.
“If you call Brooke while I’m gone, if you text her, if you answer one message, if you give her one more chance to explain herself before you give me the truth, I am leaving tonight.”
His face went white. “I won’t,” he said.
She wasn’t sure if she believed him. She left anyway.
Outside, the air smelled of wet leaves. Annie walked past Brooke’s empty space in the driveway, past the neighbor’s clipped hedges, past the maple tree Nathan had planted three springs earlier after Annie said the front yard needed something that would turn red in October.
Her cheek pulsed where Brooke had hit her. Her phone buzzed halfway down the block. For a second she thought it would be Nathan. Or Brooke. It was Maggie.
I found something else. This may be nothing, but ClearPath has a private couples retreat this weekend in Newport. One attendee list was indexed by mistake. Nathan’s name is on it. So is yours.
Annie stopped beneath a streetlamp. Another message arrived. Brooke registered both of you.
Annie stared at the screen until the words sharpened into fact. This weekend. A couples retreat. A separation consultancy. Registered without her knowledge.
She turned slowly and looked back toward the house.
Nathan stood in the front window just watching for her. For the first time all night, Annie wondered whether Brooke had ever planned for Nathan to choose her at all.
Maybe the plan had been cleaner than that.
Break the marriage. Make Annie look unstable. Guide Nathan through guilt. Deliver him single, grieving, grateful, and professionally protected into Brooke’s hands.
And if Annie refused to go quietly, there would be documentation. Therapy notes. Concerned texts. A retreat registration. A history of “cycles” and “projection” and “escalation.”
Annie looked down at Maggie’s message again. Then she called her.
Maggie answered on the first ring. “Are you okay?”
“No,” Annie said. “I need you to do one more thing.”
“Name it.”
“Find out whether Dr. Lane submitted insurance claims for my session.”
There was a pause. “Annie,” Maggie said carefully, “why?”
“Because if she did, there’s a record. And if she discussed me with Brooke after seeing me as a patient, she didn’t just betray me.”
Annie looked toward the house, where Nathan remained in the window. “She broke the law.”