6. Madison
— ? —
Madison
“She’s an absolute bitch,” Greer said, sliding a glass of wine across the table. “I don’t know how you’re dealing with this.”
“I’m dealing with it by being here instead of there.” I picked up the glass and took a long drink.
There was exactly one room where I didn’t have to hold my face a certain way, and it had Emery on one side of me and Greer on the other and a bottle open between us.
The back lounge at the Bellcliff had been our spot for years. First it had been just Emery and me, and then Greer had shown up at a coffee shop and we’d been inseparable since.
“Okay, wait.” Emery kicked off her heels and pulled her feet up onto the couch. “Start from the beginning. I got the highlights at the boat show, but I need the full picture. What exactly has this woman been doing in your house?”
“Existing,” I said. “Aggressively.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“She makes breakfast in my kitchen. She watches TV in my living room. She has long conversations with my husband every night while I sit upstairs pretending I don’t care.”
“Oh, fuck that.” Emery grabbed a handful of crackers from the cheese board. “Fuck all of that. Why haven’t you thrown her out?”
“Because Ford asked me to let her stay. She’s going through a divorce and has nowhere else to go. I’m trying to be a reasonable person.”
“Being reasonable is overrated.” Greer refilled her own glass and sat back. “I spent four years being reasonable while Graham’s mother destroyed my marriage. Reasonable doesn’t get you anywhere except lonely.”
“This is different.”
“Is it?” Greer raised an eyebrow. “Because from where I’m sitting, it looks exactly the same. Manipulative woman, clueless husband, wife going slowly insane.”
“Ford isn’t clueless. He’s just… distracted.”
Emery snorted so hard she almost choked on her cracker. “Distracted. That’s a nice word for it.”
“Shut up.”
“I’m serious. The man is not distracted. The man is checked out. He has been for months. Maybe years. And now there’s a hot woman living in his house who hangs on his every word, and you think he’s distracted?”
“She’s not that hot.”
“She’s hot enough.” Emery pointed her cracker at me. “Don’t lie to yourself. It’s unbecoming.”
“I hate you.”
“You love me. Now drink your wine and tell us what happened after you stormed off at the boat show.”
I drank my wine. “I went home. He came home an hour later. We didn’t speak for the rest of the night.”
“Classic.” Greer shook her head. “The silent treatment solves everything.”
“What was I supposed to say? I’d already said everything. I told him I needed him to set boundaries. And he called me jealous and told me I was embarrassing him.”
“Wait, he actually said that?” Emery sat up straighter. “He said you were embarrassing him?”
“In front of half of Newport. I’m sure people took pictures. I’m surprised Posy hasn’t posted anything yet.”
“Oh, I’m going to kill him.” Emery reached for the wine bottle. “I’m going to actually murder your husband. Greer, help me hide the body.”
“I know a guy,” Greer said, completely deadpan. “He owes me a favor.”
I laughed despite myself. “You two are insane.”
Greer leaned forward, her expression softening. “Mads. I need to say something, and I need you to actually hear it.”
“That sounds ominous.”
She took a breath. “She’s in your house. She was on his arm at the boat show. I lost a good man to a lie once, and I know what it looks like when the ground is shifting under your feet. This isn’t nothing.”
“It’s not the same as what happened to you,” I said. “Viola manufactured an entire affair. She paid Haley to lie. Ford’s not being manipulated. He’s just being oblivious.”
“Oblivious and manipulated look pretty similar from the outside.” Greer sat back. “I’m not saying Ford is cheating. I’m saying something is happening, whether he sees it or not. And you deserve better than being gaslit into thinking your concerns aren’t valid.”
“He’s not gaslighting me.”
“He told you that you were embarrassing him for having a completely reasonable reaction to another woman touching him all day. That’s textbook gaslighting.”
“She wasn’t touching him all day.”
“Madison.” Emery’s voice was gentler now. “I was there. I watched her. She couldn’t keep her hands off him. And yeah, he kept stepping away, but he never once told her to stop.”
“He hasn’t been in this marriage for years, honey,” Emery continued. “You know that. We all know that. The phone at dinner. The canceled plans. The way he looks through you instead of at you. That started long before Valerie showed up.”
“So what, she just walked into the vacancy?”
“Basically? Yeah.” Emery shrugged. “There was a warm body standing in the space he left. Now she’s filling it.”
I stared at my wine glass. The room felt too warm suddenly, too small.
“He’s loyal,” I said, and I could hear the wobble in my own voice. “He would never actually do anything. He’s not that kind of man. We’ve been married for ten years. That has to mean something.”
Greer and Emery exchanged a look.
“What?” I asked. “Just say it.”
“You can be faithful and still be gone,” Greer said quietly. “You can keep your vows on paper and break them in every way that actually matters. Loyalty isn’t just about not sleeping with someone else. It’s about showing up. Being present. Making your partner feel like they matter.”
“When’s the last time Ford made you feel like you mattered?” Emery asked.
I opened my mouth to answer, then closed it again. I couldn’t think of anything. Not recently. Not in months. Maybe longer.
“That’s what I thought,” Emery said softly.
The silence stretched out between us. Greer got up to open another bottle. Emery pulled her phone out, looked at it, put it away again. I sat there staring at nothing, feeling the weight of everything they weren’t saying pressing down on my chest.
“It isn’t even her,” I said finally, and my voice came out so small I barely recognized it.
“What do you mean?” Greer asked, sitting back down.
“I mean Valerie isn’t the problem. She’s just… she’s just the thing that made it impossible to ignore anymore.” I took a shaky breath. “Ford stopped seeing me years ago. Long before she showed up. He just gradually, slowly, stopped being present.”
“Madison,” Emery started.
“No, let me get this out.” I picked up my wine glass and held it without drinking.
“I’ve been lonely in my own marriage for longer than I can admit.
I’ve been sleeping next to a man who treats me like I’m part of some contract.
Nice to have around. Useful when needed.
But not worth actually engaging with. Valerie didn’t create that.
She just walked into a house that was already empty and put her feet up. ”
The words hung there, and I realized it was the truest thing I’d said out loud in years.
“Shit, Mads.” Emery scooted closer and put her arm around me. “I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“I know. But I’m still sorry. You deserve so much better than this.”
Greer moved to my other side, and suddenly I was sandwiched between my two best friends, their warmth pressing against me, their presence solid and real in a way that Ford’s hadn’t been in longer than I could remember.
“So what are you going to do?” Greer asked after a while.
“I don’t know.” I let my head fall back against the couch. “Part of me wants to leave. Part of me wants to drag Valerie out by her hair and tell Ford to wake the fuck up. And part of me still thinks that if I just try one more time, really try, I can make him see me again.”
“You can’t make someone see you,” Emery said. “They either choose to look or they don’t.”
“I know. But I have to try. I can’t walk away without giving it one more real shot. I can’t spend the rest of my life wondering if I gave up too soon.”
“That’s fair,” Greer said. “I get it. Just promise me you’ll pay attention to what he does, not just what he says. Words are easy. Actions are what matter.”
“I promise.”
“And if he doesn’t step up,” Emery added, “if he keeps choosing her comfort over yours, you call us. Day or night. We’ll come get you, bring wine, and help you burn his shit.”
I laughed, a real laugh this time. “I don’t think arson is the answer.”
“It’s always an option though.” Emery grinned. “Just saying.”