8. Gianna
— ? —
Gianna
The apartment was small.
Not “small for someone used to a Texas Hill Country manor” small.
Actually small even compared to a regular apartment.
Eight hundred square feet of beige carpet and white walls and windows that looked out onto the parking lot of a strip mall.
The kitchen was the size of Orion’s boot closet.
The bedroom barely fit a queen bed and a bassinet.
It was perfect.
“You know,” Daisy said, wrestling with an IKEA bookshelf that was clearly winning, “when I said you should leave him, I didn’t mean you should become a monk. You could’ve at least gotten a place with two bathrooms.”
“One bathroom is fine.”
She squinted at the instruction manual, turned it upside down, and squinted again. “Is this Swedish? I think it’s Swedish. Why is Swedish furniture so complicated?”
I bounced Alex gently in my arms, watching Daisy battle the bookshelf. He was two weeks old now, all pudgy cheeks and milk-drunk contentment, completely oblivious to the fact that his mother had just blown up her entire life.
“You could’ve stayed at the manor,” Daisy continued, abandoning the instructions entirely and attempting to force two pieces together through sheer determination. “Kicked him out. Made him sleep in the barn with the horses.”
“It was never mine.” I said it simply, because it was true. “It was his house that I lived in. His land. His legacy. His staff.”
“His espresso machine.”
“I never figured out how to use that thing anyway.”
The bookshelf made an ominous creaking sound. Daisy backed away slowly, hands raised like she was surrendering to it.
“Fair point,” she said. “Fresh start. Clean slate. No espresso machines that require engineering degrees.” She looked around the apartment, at the stack of boxes waiting to be unpacked, at the secondhand couch we’d found on Facebook Marketplace, at the life I was building from scratch. “It’s very… cozy.”
“It’s very me.”
“It is.” She smiled. “The old you. The one who ate ramen and laughed at stupid jokes and didn’t own a single thing that cost more than her car payment.”
I thought about that version of myself. The one who’d been Demi’s plus-one at a gala, wearing a borrowed dress, hiding at the bar because she didn’t know how to talk to rich people. The one Orion had chosen.
I know what I want, he’d said that night. I’ve always known fast.
He’d wanted me. And then he’d gotten me, and slowly, gradually, he’d stopped seeing me altogether.
“I miss her,” I admitted. “That version of me.”
“She’s still in there.” Daisy gave up on the bookshelf entirely and came to sit beside me on the couch, reaching out to touch Alex’s tiny foot. “She’s just been buried under a lot of cashmere and confusion.”
That night, Alex wouldn’t stop crying.
It started around 10 p.m., a fussy whimper that escalated into full-throated wails. I tried feeding him. He wasn’t hungry. Tried changing him. He was clean. Tried bouncing, rocking, singing, walking, every trick the internet and the parenting books had promised would work.
Nothing worked.
I paced the tiny apartment with him cradled against my chest, my C-section stitches aching with every step, my whole body so exhausted it felt like I was moving through water. The walls seemed to close in around me. The crying drilled into my skull.
You could call Orion, a voice in my head whispered. He’d send help in minutes. A night nurse. A nanny. Whatever you needed.
I knew he would. Money was the one thing Orion had never failed to provide. It was everything else, presence, attention, the simple act of showing up when it mattered, that he couldn’t seem to manage.
But I didn’t call.
I had to prove I could do this alone.
At 1 a.m., Alex was still crying. I’d run out of ideas, run out of songs, run out of the ability to form coherent thoughts. My arms were shaking. My eyes were burning. I felt like I was coming apart at the seams.
“Please,” I whispered to my son. “Please, baby. I don’t know what you want. I don’t know how to help you.”
He wailed louder, like he was offended that I didn’t have the answers.
I thought about the manor. The nursery we’d decorated together. No, the nursery I’d decorated while Orion approved things via text message. The horses painted across the wall. The night nurse we’d planned to hire. The support system I’d assumed would be there.
I thought about Orion’s arms, strong and steady, calloused palms warm against my skin, how he’d held me after that first night together like I was something precious.
At 4 a.m., Alex finally fell asleep.
I stood in the middle of my tiny kitchen, my son peaceful against my shoulder at last, and I started to cry.
Ugly, gasping sobs that I had to muffle against my hand so I wouldn’t wake him.
I cried for the marriage I’d lost. For the husband I’d thought I had.
For the version of my life that had seemed so perfect from the outside and had been so hollow within.
I cried until I couldn’t breathe, and then I stopped, because I had to. Because there was no one else to take over. Because this was my life now, and I was going to have to learn to live it.
***
The next morning, Daisy’s phone rang while she was making coffee.
I watched her face change as she listened. Concern, then alarm, then resignation. My stomach dropped before she even hung up.
“My mom,” she said, setting down her phone. “She fell. Broke her hip. They’re doing surgery tomorrow.”
“Oh, Daisy. I’m so sorry.”
“I have to go back.” She said it apologetically, like she was the one who should be sorry. “I’m the only one who can… my brothers are useless, you know how they are…”
“Go.” I stood up, Alex still sleeping in my arms, and crossed to her. “Your mom needs you. I’ll be fine.”
“You have a two-week-old baby and stitches in your abdomen.”
“I also have a working phone and a delivery app. I’ll manage.”
Daisy didn’t look convinced. “He’s still your husband,” she said quietly. “The divorce isn’t final yet. You’re allowed to ask for help.”
I thought about calling Orion. Thought about what it would mean to let him back in, even a little.
He’d show up with nannies and night nurses and solutions, and I’d be grateful, and then slowly, gradually, I’d start to need him again.
Start to depend on him. Start to forget why I’d left in the first place.
“I’m not ready for that,” I said. “I’m not sure I ever will be.”
Daisy hugged me hard, careful of the baby between us. “You’re the strongest person I know,” she said into my hair. “But you don’t have to be strong all the time.”
She left that afternoon, and the apartment went quiet.
It was just me and Alex now. I looked down at my son, peaceful and completely dependent on me.
“Okay,” I told him. “It’s you and me, kid. We’ve got this.”
He yawned, unimpressed.