Chapter 4 #2
The house is empty—no other buyers yet, just the smell of fresh paint and staged vanilla candles. The realtor meets me in the foyer, mid-fifties, ash-blond highlights, a handshake like she’s running for office. “Welcome! I’m Deborah. First time looking in Creekside?”
“First time.” I take the flyer and smile. “I’ve been wanting something quieter. Outside the city.”
“You’re going to love it here.” She walks me through the living room, pointing at crown molding, original hardwood, southern exposure. I nod and make the right sounds while my pulse ticks against my collarbone. The front window faces the street. Four houses down, the red door.
“How are the neighbors?” I lean against the kitchen island like I’m settling in, like this matters to me the way square footage matters, the way school districts matter. “That’s always my thing. You can love the house but if the people next door are awful...”
“Oh, this block is wonderful.” Deborah opens a cabinet to show me soft-close hinges. “Everyone looks out for each other.”
“I think I saw a couple when I was parking. A few houses down—the one with the red door and the garden?” I keep my voice light. Idle curiosity. Woman making conversation. “Looked like they take really good care of that place.”
Deborah’s face opens up like I’ve pressed a button. “Oh, that’s Sloane and Caleb. Lovely couple.”
Sloane and Caleb.
Not the couple down the street. Not the new owners. Sloane and Caleb, said together, paired, the way you say the names of people who belong to each other. The kitchen island is cool under my palms and I press into it because my knees are doing something unreliable.
“They just bought about five months ago,” Deborah goes on, oblivious, thrilled to have a story to tell.
“She did all the landscaping herself—pulled up the old sod, planted the roses, did the whole front path. And he built that stone border over a weekend. You should have seen him out there with the level, making sure every piece was straight. So handy.”
Caleb. Handy. My husband who called a plumber when our bathroom faucet dripped and who hasn’t picked up a tool in all the years I’ve known him is building stone borders on weekends for Sloane. The bile rises so fast I have to swallow twice.
“Are they newlyweds?”
“Not yet! Getting married in a couple of months.” Deborah lowers her voice like she’s sharing something precious.
“They told me they want a huge family. She was saying they’re going to convert the guest room into a nursery once they’re settled.
” She presses a hand to her chest. “You can just tell with some couples, right? Some people move in and there’s tension everywhere. These two—they’re the real deal.”
My fingernails are digging into the underside of the countertop. I can feel the edge biting into skin and I don’t let go because if I let go I’m going to put my fist through Deborah’s soft-close cabinet.
“She sounds great.” The words taste like battery acid.
“A sweetheart. Really warm. She brought me cookies when I started listing this place—homemade, wrapped in a little ribbon. Who does that?” Deborah laughs.
“And he’s charming. Travels a lot for work, some kind of consulting, but every time he’s home they’re inseparable.
She told me she’s never been this happy. ”
She’s never been this happy. Sloane has never been this happy.
Sloane, who squeezed my hand at our Greek restaurant six days ago and told me you deserve someone who shows up, is telling the neighborhood realtor she’s never been this happy because my husband builds her garden walls and sleeps in her bed and is planning to give her the family she always wanted—with my money, in my marriage, while I sit on kitchen floors and cry into his shirts.
The front door opens. Voices—a couple in their thirties, the woman already pointing at the fireplace.
“Excuse me one second,” Deborah says, squeezing my arm. “Make yourself at home. Look around.”
I nod. My jaw is clamped so tight my molars ache. Deborah floats toward the new arrivals with her handshake and her highlights and I turn away and grip the counter and breathe through my nose until the white spots at the edges of my vision clear.
The stairs are behind the kitchen. I take them slowly, one hand on the railing, because my legs feel borrowed.
The upstairs hallway has three bedrooms and a bathroom staged with rolled towels.
I don’t look at any of it. The back bedroom has a window facing the yards behind the house, and I walk to it because something is pulling me there, some terrible gravity.
Three houses down. Their backyard.
Sloane is kneeling in the garden bed along the fence, gloves on, hair tied up, pulling weeds and dropping them into a bucket beside her.
Caleb is next to her with a trowel, turning soil.
They’re close enough that their shoulders bump when he reaches across her for the watering can, and she tips her head back and laughs—the sound floats up thin and bright through the glass, mixed with music from a speaker on the patio. Something acoustic, something easy.
He says something I can’t make out and she throws a handful of dirt at him and he catches her wrist and pulls her in and she’s laughing against his chest and his chin is resting on the top of her head and they look like a photograph.
Like a stock image of happiness you’d see on a greeting card or a real estate listing—Creekside Estates: Where Your Life Begins.
My vision goes red at the edges.
Not the metaphor kind. Actual red—blood-warm, pulsing, like something has ruptured behind my eyes.
I’m gripping the windowsill so hard the painted wood creaks under my fingers.
That woman in that garden with dirt on her gloves and my husband’s arms around her sat across from me and described his hands to me like they were a discovery she made.
He’s so intentional. Every single thing he does is on purpose.
She called me from that house. She left a voicemail from that house, performing sympathy about his absences while living in the reason for them.
My phone is in my hand. I don’t remember pulling it out. I take three photos through the window—the house, the backyard, the two of them kneeling in the dirt together. Then I go downstairs, nod at Deborah, take a flyer I will never look at again, and walk out.
At the car I open the camera and shoot the red door, the Audi in the driveway, the license plate sharp and clear. Pull up the burner email. Attach everything. Type three words in the subject line.
I was right.