Four
Harper
Friday mornings in our house were always transactional: get Leo dressed, get breakfast into him, get him to school with the correct number of limbs and accessories attached.
I used to take perverse pride in how efficiently I could run this circuit, making time for real coffee and a vaguely edible protein bar before the school run.
I didn’t realize, until this morning, that my entire domestic operating system depended on the invisible presence of another adult body moving in the background, someone to switch the laundry, to uncap the toothpaste, to comment on the weather in that throwaway way that says, “I am here, I am part of this.” The house feels cavernous without Ethan.
Even the sound of Leo’s voice bounces off the kitchen tiles like it’s trying to fill the extra space.
He’s up before me, standing in the middle of the kitchen in a pair of Batman briefs, holding his cereal bowl overhead like an Olympic torch.
“Can I have the marshmallow kind?” he asks, already knowing my usual answer.
“Today only,” I say. “You earned it by being the world’s most patient human last night.”
He beams. “I want to thank the academy.” He proceeds to bow and I wonder if maybe watching the awards show was the wrong choice.
I choose to ignore my parental failings and pour the cereal.
He watches the ratio of marshmallow to regular bits with the concentration of a bomb squad technician.
When he’s satisfied, he carries the bowl to the living room and balances it on the arm of the couch so he can eat and build a dinosaur trap out of plastic blocks at the same time.
I check my phone. Still nothing from Ethan.
There’s a missed call from Elsie from early this morning and a string of messages from her, all variations on “I’m here if you need me” and one “Luca says he will fight Ethan in the parking lot if you give him the go-ahead.” I consider this, and the mental image cheers me more than I’d like to admit.
I decide that I am not even mad at her for telling Luca.
It saves me having to go over it all. AGAIN.
The next ten minutes are spent negotiating Leo into pants, then into shoes, then back out of pyjamas and into the clean shirt I picked out.
I nearly cave when he says, “But this one is my lucky shirt,” holding up a tattered soccer jersey with a history of stains that can be carbon-dated by school year.
I stand firm, because it is what mothers do, and because holding the line on anything feels like proof that I am not, in fact, dissolving into goo.
By the time we make it to the door, I am sweating, clutching my coffee like an emergency device. I find Leo’s left shoe under the couch (of course), and his backpack in the fridge (no explanation, but a reasonable metaphor for my brain right now).
We get in the car. He clicks his own seatbelt, humming under his breath.
Halfway to school, he starts the questions.
“Do you think T-Rexes could swim?”
“Maybe. Their arms would be useless, though.”
“But their tails are like rudders,” he counters. “What if you had T-Rex swimming lessons?”
“Only if the instructor has good insurance.”
He laughs, and I feel it in my chest, a small relief ballooning under the ribs.
We hit the carpool line. I sip my coffee, watch the cluster of parents at the school gate, all of them in some version of leggings and athletic shoes and the haunted look of people who have already lost multiple battles this morning. There’s a kind of secret solidarity in it.
Leo is unbuckled before I’ve even stopped the car. He slings his backpack over one shoulder, pauses at the door. “Mom?”
“Yeah?”
He looks at me for a beat, then says, “Nothing,” but the way he says it is not nothing at all. He gives a little wave and disappears into the writhing mass of children.
I sit for a minute, just breathing, letting the car idle. I check my phone again. Still nothing from Ethan. Still nothing from the universe. I drive home on autopilot, the radio off, every silence in the car mapped to a corresponding silence inside my own head.
The house is even emptier now. The breakfast bowls are still out, the living room a riot of blocks and stuffed dinosaurs, a shoe left in the hallway like a breadcrumb trail for future archaeologists.
I walk through it, unsure of what to do with myself now that the basic requirements of morning have been met.
This is the part where Ethan would have appeared, half-dressed, hair still wet from the shower and made some dry comment about the traffic.
Instead, there is nothing. Just me and the unresolved hum of yesterday’s disaster.
I go to the kitchen, set my phone on the counter, and stare at it. I know what I have to do. I dial Clara.
She answers on the second ring. “Harper,” she says. No question, no uncertainty.
I take a breath, then another. “I was hoping you could help me. I need a divorce,” I say. “Ethan. He’s gone. He left a few days ago after I discovered he was cheating.”
“I am so sorry,” Clara says. “Did he take anything with him?”
“Clothes. Toiletries. That’s it.” I can hear the click of her pen, even over the phone. “He said I could tell Leo whatever I want.”
Clara makes a hmm noise, like she’s filing that away for later. “Any communication since he left?”
I look at my phone, as if the act of checking will change the answer. “No. Not really, just a few texts about talking through lawyers and needing ‘space’.”
She is silent for half a beat. Then, in a tone that is utterly un-Clara, she says, “He’s an asshole.”
The word is so abrupt, so out of place, that I actually laugh. It bursts out of me, a bright, startled sound, and for a second it feels almost good.
“I needed to hear that,” I say.
Clara’s tone shifts instantly back to business. “Okay. Here’s what we do. First, I need the last six months of bank statements. Both the joint accounts and anything in your name.”
I nod, already mentally scanning the filing drawer in the study. “Okay.”
“I also need to know who his lawyer is.”
I blink. “He hasn’t told me. He said… he said all communication should go through you. But he didn’t say who he’s using.”
“That’s typical. Alright, that’s job two for you. Find out who’s representing him. If you can’t get it from him, check your mail, sometimes the other side will send a courtesy letter.”
“Okay.”
“Harper, this is manageable,” Clara says, brisk and certain. “We get the paperwork together. We control what we can control. Everything else…” She lets the sentence hang, unfinished, but I get the point.
I want to ask her how many times she’s done this exact call, with someone choking on the ashes of their own life, but I don’t. Instead, I just say, “Thank you.”
“Call me the second you get anything. Even if it’s just a feeling that something is off.”
We hang up. I stand in the kitchen for a minute, then pour myself another coffee.
The silence in the house seems more intense now, so I fill it with tasks.
I start a load of laundry, wipe down the counters, sweep the breakfast debris into the bin.
I move through the rooms, collecting evidence of my life as if it’s all going to be examined by some future judge, each object a potential exhibit in the trial of Who Was More Responsible For This Mess.
By the time I finish, it’s not even 9:30.
The day stretches ahead in daunting fashion.
I go to my desk, open my laptop, and log into the bank portal.
My password is one Ethan would never guess, a name from my first ever novel, typing it in is a petty triumph that feels huge right now.
I download the statements, PDF after PDF, then find the tax folder with the hard copies.
I set them all in a neat pile on the edge of my desk.
There is an unread email at the top of my inbox. It’s from my editor, Rachel, subject line: “Checking In—Hope All’s Well!”
My hands go cold. I open it. The email is breezy and kind in the way that only someone who is absolutely not your friend can be: “Just wondering if you had a chance to make progress on the new chapters! If you need an extension, let me know, we’re flexible as always! Hope all is well with the family.”
I stare at the screen for a long time. The due date was last Monday.
I had convinced myself I could catch up over the weekend, but the weekend became the week, and then Ethan detonated our marriage and now here I am, collecting bank statements instead of writing steamy, emotionally literate cheating scenes.
I reply: “Hi, Rachel. There’s been a situation on the home front and I’m behind, but I will get you something within the next few days. Sorry for the delay.”
I almost delete “Sorry,” but leave it in, because I can’t bring myself to pretend I’m not sorry.
Rachel replies in less than twenty minutes: “Of course, Harper! Take whatever time you need. Life first, deadlines second. We’re all rooting for you.”
It’s nice, but also not. The knowledge that my personal disaster is being quietly tracked by an entire marketing department makes me want to crawl out of my own skin.
I close the laptop. I sit at my desk, surrounded by folders and statements and the scattered paperwork of a marriage mid-collapse, and I think about how, until yesterday, I was writing about other people’s pain, packaging it for easy consumption.
Now my own is on display, every detail a bullet point in a case file, every memory just more evidence to be sorted.
I stand up. I go to the bathroom, splash water on my face, stare at my reflection until I can make myself believe that I look the same as I did last week.