4. Christine
— ? —
Christine
The nursery is finished. The paint is still wrong.
I’ve been standing in the doorway for an hour with a brush in one hand and a cloth in the other, trying to convince myself it doesn’t matter. It’s close enough. Soft buttercup instead of warm honey, barely a shade different, nothing anyone would notice.
Benedict would have noticed.
Benedict would have looked at the paint chips I agonized over and known immediately which one I wanted. He would have held them up to the light, compared them to swatches I’d saved on my phone, and said something like this one - it matches the sunset the night I proposed.
That’s who he used to be. A man who remembered what color the sunset was when he asked me to marry him.
Now he can’t remember to come home for dinner.
I dip the brush into the can anyway and touch up a corner that didn’t need touching. What’s the point of waiting? He’s not coming. He’s never coming, not for this, not for the moments that don’t have dollar signs attached.
The mural of stars I painted myself stretches across one wall - silver and white against the soft (wrong) yellow, a constellation I made up because I wanted our daughter to have her own sky.
I spent three nights on it, standing on a stepladder that wobbled every time I reached for the higher corners, one hand braced against the wall, the other clutching a brush.
He was supposed to hold the ladder.
YouTube tutorials taught me how to assemble the crib instead. A woman with a cheerful voice and an improbably clean house walked me through each step while I sat on the floor, eight months pregnant, crying over an Allen wrench because the delivery men couldn’t stay and he wasn’t there.
He’s never there.
The mobile I ordered hangs above the crib now - silver stars that catch the light and spin lazy circles in the air conditioning. I watch them turn, hypnotized, and think about all the ways this room was supposed to be different.
We’ll do it together, he said when I first showed him the design boards. Every weekend until it’s done. I want to be part of this.
That was months ago. Before Budapest. Before the board meetings and the hostile investors and the endless parade of emergencies that somehow always take priority over me.
I press my hand to my belly. The baby shifts, restless, and I feel her heel drag across my ribs like she’s trying to escape. Soon, sweetheart, I think. Soon it’ll be just us.
Just us.
The thought should scare me. Instead, it feels almost like relief.
My phone rings, and my heart does that stupid, hopeful leap it’s been trained to do - maybe it’s him, maybe he’s calling to say he’s coming home, maybe-
Mom.
I answer anyway, propping the phone against a stuffed elephant on the dresser so I can keep painting while we talk.
“Sweetheart.” Her face fills the screen, warm and worried and so familiar it makes my throat tight. “How are you feeling? How’s my granddaughter?”
“Kicking up a storm. I think she’s going to be a soccer player.”
“A Morgan with athletic ability. That’ll be a first.” She peers closer at the screen, frowning. “Is that the nursery? It looks beautiful. Did Benedict help?”
The brush stops mid-stroke.
“He’s been busy.”
“Busy.” The word comes out flat. Loaded. My mother has never been subtle about her opinions, and right now her opinion is written all over her face. “Sweetheart, where is your husband?”
“Working.”
“He’s always working.”
“Mom-”
“You made yourself small for him.” Her voice softens but doesn’t lose its edge. “You gave up your business, your friends, your life. You moved into that mausoleum of a penthouse and you smile for his cameras and you host his parties and you-”
“I made choices.” The words come out sharper than I intended. “I chose to support his career. I chose-”
“You chose him. And he gives you credit cards and empty rooms.”
I can’t breathe. The nursery feels too small suddenly, the wrong-yellow walls pressing in, and I have to close my eyes against the truth of what she’s saying.
“It’s not like that.”
“Then what is it like?” She waits. Patient, relentless, the way only mothers can be. “Tell me, Christine. Tell me what it’s like, and I’ll believe you.”
I open my mouth to defend him. To explain about the pressure he’s under, the jobs depending on him, the legacy he’s fighting to protect. To say all the things I’ve been saying to myself for months, the excuses I’ve polished until they almost shine.
Nothing comes out.
“That’s what I thought.” Mom sighs. “Sweetheart, I love you. But you deserve better than waiting.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
The doorbell saves me from having to answer.
“I have to go. Someone’s at the door.”
“We’re not finished talking about this.”
“I know that too.”
I end the call before she can say anything else, before the concern in her eyes can crack the careful composure I’ve built around myself like armor.
The delivery person is gone by the time I reach the door, but there’s a box on the mat. Tiffany blue, tied with a white ribbon, and I know before I open it what this is. What it means.
Sorry I missed dinner.
That’s what the card says. Four words and a dash and a single letter: - B
Not even his full name. Not love, Benedict. Not thinking of you. Just B, like we’re business associates, like I’m someone who gets shorthand instead of sentiment.
The handwriting isn’t his.
I stare at that for a long time - the careful cursive that belongs to some assistant I’ve never met, someone who probably has a whole drawer full of Tiffany boxes for occasions just like this. Apology gifts, ordered in bulk, dispatched without thought.
I leave the box on the kitchen counter, unopened.
I don’t want to know what’s inside. A bracelet, probably. Maybe earrings. Something expensive and beautiful and utterly meaningless, chosen by someone who doesn’t know me for a man who’s forgotten how to try.
This is my life now. Designer apologies and empty rooms and a husband who sends his regrets through staff.
I walk back to the nursery because I don’t know where else to go. The paint is drying on the walls, the stars are spinning above the crib, and I am so tired. Tired of hoping. Tired of waiting. Tired of being the only one who shows up for this marriage.
My phone lights up on the dresser.
At first I think it’s Mom calling back, ready to finish her lecture. But it’s not a call - it’s a notification. One of those celebrity gossip apps I downloaded months ago when I still cared about things like that.
B-MORGAN CEO’S LATE NIGHTS - WHO IS THE MYSTERY BLONDE?
I shouldn’t look. I know I shouldn’t look. Whatever’s in that article will hurt, and I’ve been hurt enough, and the smart thing - the self-preserving thing - would be to delete the notification and put down my phone and go to bed.
I look anyway.
The photo fills my screen.
Benedict, leaving a restaurant I don’t recognize. Pauline Hartley beside him, her hand on his back, both of them smiling. He’s looking at her the way he used to look at me - like she’s said something clever, something that surprised him, something worth paying attention to.
My hands start shaking.
I read the caption: B-Morgan CEO Benedict Morgan was spotted leaving Marcello’s with VP Pauline Hartley for the third time this month. Sources say the two have been ‘inseparable’ lately. No comment from Morgan’s pregnant wife, Christine, who sources describe as ‘rarely seen’ at recent events…
Third time this month.
Inseparable.
Rarely seen.
The phone slips from my fingers, clattering against the hardwood floor. I don’t pick it up. I can’t - my hands are shaking too hard, my vision blurring, something cracking open in my chest that I’ve been holding together with nothing but willpower and denial.
He has time for dinner with her.
Three dinners with her, in one month, while I eat alone in a penthouse that echoes with his absence. While I assemble cribs by myself and paint murals by myself and lie awake waiting for footsteps that never come.
He laughs with her. He smiles with her. He lets her touch him, casual and familiar, like she belongs there.
Like I used to belong.
I sink to the floor of the nursery - this room I built alone, for a daughter he might never make time for - and I press my hands to my face and I try to remember how to breathe.
The baby kicks. I press my palm flat against my belly, feeling her move, and something hardens inside me. Something cold and quiet and final, like a door closing.
I can’t keep doing this.
I can’t keep waiting for a man who’s already left.
The stars spin overhead, silver and hopeful, and I make my daughter a promise I intend to keep: I will not teach you to wait. I will not teach you that love means being forgotten. I will not let you grow up watching your mother shrink herself into spaces that weren’t built to hold her.
I will show you what it looks like when a woman chooses herself.
Even if it breaks me first.