2. Sophie
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Sophie
The flight is eleven hours of hell.
I don’t sleep. Can’t sleep. Every time I close my eyes, I see that picture. Red lace on white sheets. Andrea’s smile, coy and knowing. I miss your hands on me.
How long? That’s what I keep wondering. How long has this been going on? Was it before the pregnancy? During? Was he sleeping with our babysitter while I was throwing up every morning, while my body was stretching and aching and creating life?
The woman next to me asks if I’m okay.
“Fine,” I say, and the word tastes like ash. “Just eager to get home to my daughter.”
She nods like she understands, and I turn toward the window and watch the darkness pass below us and try to remember how to breathe.
By the time the plane lands, I’ve made a plan. Confront Andrea first. Get Anna. Get out. Figure out the rest later.
The cab ride home takes forever. New York traffic, even at six in the morning, is a nightmare. But finally, finally, we pull up to the brownstone Caleb’s parents gave him. The house I moved into as a newlywed, glowing with hope and love and the certainty that I’d found my forever.
I overtip the driver and practically run up the steps.
My hands are shaking when I unlock the door. The house is quiet - too quiet - and for one horrible moment I imagine the worst. Anna hurt. Anna gone. Something terrible that I wasn’t here to prevent because I was on a balcony in Greece watching my husband pretend he loved me.
But then I hear her. The soft babbling from the nursery upstairs. My baby, awake and content, probably playing with her toes like she does every morning.
Relief nearly drops me to my knees.
“Sophie?”
I spin around. Andrea’s standing in the kitchen doorway, wearing one of my robes - my robe, in my house - holding a coffee cup like she belongs here. Like this is her home.
“You’re back early,” she says, and there’s something in her voice. A wariness. “Caleb said you weren’t coming home until-”
“I know.”
Andrea blinks. “You know what?”
“I know.” I take a step toward her, and she takes a step back. Good. She should. “I saw the picture, Andrea. I saw the message.”
The color drains from her face. “I don’t-”
“Don’t.” My voice is steady, but my hands have curled into fists at my sides. “Don’t lie to me. Don’t you dare stand there in my robe, in my kitchen, after sleeping with my husband, and lie to my face.”
For a moment, she just stares at me. Then something shifts. Her chin lifts. Her expression hardens into something I don’t recognize.
“So what if I did?” She sets down the coffee cup, and her hands aren’t shaking at all. “What did you expect, Sophie? You barely touched him for months. You were always tired, always with the baby, always too busy to give him what he needed.”
I laugh, and it sounds unhinged even to me. “What he needed? I was recovering from pushing a human being out of my body. I was surviving on three hours of sleep. I was-”
“Making excuses.” Andrea crosses her arms. “Caleb deserves someone who can take care of him. Someone who appreciates him.”
“And that’s you?” I’m moving toward her without deciding to, and she backs up until she hits the counter. “A twenty-something babysitter who spreads her legs because she thinks it’ll get her a rich husband?”
Her hand cracks across my face before I see it coming.
The slap rings through the kitchen, and for a moment everything goes silent. My cheek burns. My ears ring. And something inside me - something I’ve been holding back since that balcony, since that message, since my entire world collapsed - finally snaps.
I hit her back.
Not a slap. A punch. My fist connects with her jaw, and pain explodes through my knuckles, but I don’t care because she’s stumbling, hand flying to her face, eyes wide with shock.
“What the hell-”
“That’s for touching my husband.” I advance on her, and my voice has gone low and dangerous, a voice I didn’t know I had. “Now get out of my house before I do something we’ll both regret.”
“You can’t kick me out. Caleb-”
“Caleb’s not here.” I grab her arm and start dragging her toward the door.
She fights, pulling and scratching, but I have rage on my side and it makes me stronger than I’ve ever been.
“Caleb’s in Greece, probably wondering where his wife disappeared to in the middle of the night.
And when he gets back, I’ll be gone, and you can have him.
You can have this whole pathetic mess. But right now, you’re getting out of my sight. ”
I yank open the front door and shove her through it. She stumbles on the steps, barely catching herself on the railing, and spins to face me with mascara already smearing down her cheeks.
“You’re crazy,” she spits. “You’re actually crazy.”
“Maybe.” I start to close the door. “But I’m a crazy woman with a baby to protect. So stay away from me and my daughter, Andrea. I mean it.”
“Anna belongs here. With her real family. With her father, who actually-”
I don’t hear the rest because I’ve slammed the door in her face.
For a moment, I just stand there, forehead pressed against the wood, breathing hard. My hand throbs. My face throbs. Everything throbs.
But I don’t have time to fall apart. I have to move.
I take the stairs two at a time, burst into the nursery, and there she is. My Anna. My baby girl. Sitting up in her crib, chewing on a stuffed elephant, looking up at me with those big eyes that are so much like mine.
“Hi, sweetheart.” I scoop her up and hold her so tight she squirms in protest. “Hi, my love. Mommy’s here. Mommy’s got you.”
She babbles something that might be mama, and I choke on a sob.
“We’re leaving,” I tell her, like she can understand. “We’re going somewhere safe. Somewhere he can’t hurt us.”
I grab her diaper bag. I grab clothes - hers, mine, whatever I can fit.
I grab the important documents from the safe because I know the code and Caleb never thought to change it.
I grab the emergency cash I’ve been hiding in my sock drawer for years, a habit from a childhood spent watching my mother scrape by.
I don’t grab photos. I don’t grab memories. I don’t grab anything that ties me to the man I married.
When I come back downstairs with Anna on my hip and two suitcases rolling behind me, I hear Andrea’s voice drifting through the door. She’s on the phone, pacing on the front steps, probably thinking I can’t hear her.
“Baby, she’s gone crazy. She just left with Anna. Come back, we need you.”
My heart cracks right down the middle.
Baby. She called him baby. She’s calling my husband, telling him to come home, like she’s the wife and I’m the intruder.
I blink back tears and hoist Anna higher on my hip.
I will not cry. I will not break. Not yet. Not until I’m somewhere safe, somewhere he can’t see me, somewhere I can fall apart in private.
I slip out the back door, circle around to the street, and hail a cab.
“Where to?” the driver asks.
I give him Alexa’s address and settle Anna on my lap.
My daughter grabs my finger, and I watch the brownstone disappear in the rearview mirror.
I don’t look back.