16. Maren
— ? —
Maren
“Maren.”
The voice doesn’t belong here. It’s too polished, too corporate, too everything-I-left-behind, and when I look up, Rachel Vaughn is standing in the middle of my shop like she wandered into the wrong zip code and decided to stay anyway.
She’s wearing a cream blazer that probably cost more than my monthly rent at Nora’s.
Her hair is blown out. Her makeup is flawless in that way that’s supposed to look effortless but requires three different primers.
She looks like she’s about to chair a meeting, not stand between buckets of ranunculus and last week’s dried eucalyptus.
“You’re in my shop,” I say.
“I can see that.”
“No, I mean-” I set down the peonies and wipe my hands on my apron. “You’re in my shop. Deliberately, on purpose, with your whole body.”
Rachel’s smile is thin. Professional. The kind of smile she probably practices in mirrors before big meetings. “I thought it was time we talked.”
Nina glances at me from behind the counter, eyebrows raised in a silent question. I give her a small shake of my head. Whatever this is, I don’t need an audience for it.
“I’m going to grab lunch,” Nina says, already reaching for her bag. “Back in an hour?”
“Take your time.”
The door chimes again as she leaves, and then it’s just me and the woman who’s been photographed leaving my husband’s hotel room, who texts him at midnight, who somehow always manages to be standing exactly where I should be.
“So.” I lean against the worktable and cross my arms. “Did Rhodes send you?”
“Rhodes doesn’t know I’m here.”
“Then this should be interesting.”
Rachel moves through the shop like she’s cataloging it.
Her fingers brush a display of succulents.
She studies the chalkboard menu of arrangements.
She pauses at the photo wall where I’ve hung pictures of past installations, the Whitmore gala centerpieces, the Ashworth wedding arch, the Fitzgerald anniversary party that made the society pages.
“It’s smaller than I expected,” she says.
“Most things are.”
She turns back to me, and something in her expression shifts. The professional veneer cracks just enough to let something sharper through. “I came here to tell you that what you did at that gala was unforgivable.”
I laugh. I actually laugh. “I’m sorry, what I did?”
“You humiliated him in front of everyone who matters. Do you have any idea what the last three weeks have been like? The damage control? The phone calls? Julian has been fielding press inquiries around the clock. The Westbrook deal is hanging by a thread because they’re suddenly concerned about ‘personal instability.’”
“Personal instability.” I taste the words. “Is that what we’re calling it?”
“I’m calling it a wife who couldn’t handle the pressure of being married to someone successful.”
The anger that rises in my chest is old and familiar. I’ve been carrying it for years, pressing it down every time I smiled at another networking event, every time I pretended I didn’t see the way she looked at him, every time I told myself that being a good wife meant being a quiet one.
I’m so fucking tired of being quiet.
“Let me make sure I understand,” I say. “You came to my place of business to lecture me about humiliating Rhodes. The man who let that woman drag me onstage like a prop. The man who stood there and watched while I was ambushed with a fake award designed to make me look like a charity case. That’s the narrative we’re going with? ”
“He didn’t know about the award.”
“He should have.”
“He’s not a mind reader, Maren.”
“No, he’s just the man in charge of a place where the woman who works for him apparently has the authority to publicly embarrass his wife without his knowledge or consent.” I push off the worktable. “Which raises some interesting questions about who’s actually running things over there.”
Rachel’s jaw tightens. Direct hit.
“Rhodes needs someone who understands his world,” she says. “Someone who can navigate it with him instead of constantly pulling him backward. Someone who doesn’t make him feel guilty every time he succeeds.”
“Make him feel guilty for succeeding.” I repeat it slowly, like I’m trying to understand a language I don’t speak. “That’s what you think I do?”
“I think you resent everything he’s built. I think you’ve spent your entire marriage waiting for him to choose this-” She gestures at the shop, at the flowers, at me. “over everything he’s worked for. And when he didn’t, when he kept growing without you, you decided to burn it all down.”
The assessment is so wildly wrong that it takes me a second to respond. She doesn’t know anything. She’s never known anything. She’s looked at my marriage from the outside and invented a story that makes her the hero.
“Rachel.” I take a step closer. “What are you actually doing here?”
“I told you. I came to-”
“No. The company line is cute, but we both know this isn’t about the Westbrook deal or damage control or Rhodes’s precious reputation.” I study her face, watching for the tell. “So what is it? What do you actually want?”
The silence stretches. Rachel’s composure wavers, and for just a second, I see something real underneath. Something desperate and hungry and far too exposed.
“I love him,” she says.
There it is.
I should be surprised. I should be shocked, scandalized, whatever reaction she’s expecting. Instead, all I feel is a grim confirmation of something I’ve suspected for years.
“I know,” I say.
That throws her. “You know?”
“I’ve known since the Calloway Christmas party three years ago. The way you watched him give his toast. The way you touched his arm when you handed him a drink.” I shrug. “It wasn’t subtle.”
“And you never said anything?”
“What was I supposed to say? ‘Hey, honey, the woman you work with is in love with you, maybe don’t take so many late-night meetings with her?’ He’d have told me I was being paranoid. Jealous. Insecure.” I laugh, but there’s no humor in it. “And the beautiful irony is, I was right the whole time.”
Rachel’s chin lifts. “Yes. You were.”
Something in her tone makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. “What does that mean?”
“It means I’m done pretending. I’m done watching him torture himself over a marriage that’s been dead for years. I’m done being the other woman when I should have been the only woman.”
“You’re not the other woman,” I say. “You’re his employee.”
“I’m the person who’s been there for him every day while you played florist and complained about being lonely.”
“I’m a florist. It’s not a costume.”
“I’m the person who understood what he needed.” Rachel takes a step toward me, and there’s a fevered light in her eyes that makes my stomach turn. “I’m the person he turned to when you weren’t enough.”
“Turned to.” I keep my voice steady. “For what, exactly?”
“I think you know.”
“I really don’t.”
Rachel smiles, and it’s the cruelest expression I’ve ever seen on a human face. “I slept with him.”
The words land and go nowhere. I wait for the impact, for the gut-punch, the devastation, the collapse, but it doesn’t come. Instead, I feel something like relief, because finally, finally, she’s shown me who she really is.
“No, you didn’t.”
Her smile falters. “Excuse me?”
“You didn’t sleep with my husband.”
“You sound very sure.”
“Because I know my husband.” I cross my arms. “Rhodes is a lot of things. He’s emotionally absent, a workaholic, terrible at prioritizing anything that doesn’t have a deadline attached. But he’s not a cheater.”
“Do you?”
“Do I what?”
“Know your husband.” Rachel’s head tilts. “Because from where I’m standing, it seems like you’ve been operating on assumptions for years.”
“And from where I’m standing, it seems like you’ve convinced yourself that proximity equals intimacy.
” I let the words land. “It doesn’t. You can eat dinner with him every night, know his coffee order and his meeting schedule and the names of everyone he works with, be the first person he calls when there’s a crisis. None of that means he’s fucking you.”
“Better than you ever will.”
“Then you know about the freckle.”
The room tilts slightly. Or maybe that’s just me.
“What?”
“The freckle.” Rachel’s voice is calm now. Triumphant. “Low on his stomach, right side, almost at his hip.”
My heart stops. Actually stops, for a full second, before slamming back to life with a violence that makes my ears ring.
She shouldn’t know that.
There’s no reason, no innocent, explainable, logical reason, for Rachel Vaughn to know about a freckle that sits so low on my husband’s body that I’ve only seen it because I’ve spent years memorizing every inch of him.
I’ve kissed that freckle. I’ve traced it with my fingertip while he slept.
It’s mine, it’s ours, something no one else should ever know exists.
“How the fuck do you know that?”
Rachel’s smile returns. “How do you think?”
My hands are shaking. I curl them into fists to make them stop, but it doesn’t work.
Everything I thought I knew is rearranging itself in my head, the late nights, the hotel rooms, the trips I wasn’t invited on, the way they finish each other’s sentences, the photo of her leaving his suite, the years of proximity I told myself didn’t mean anything.
I defended him.
I defended him to myself, to Nora, to everyone who raised an eyebrow at the way that woman looked at him. I said the words with such certainty: Rhodes would never. And the whole time…
No.
No.
“I don’t believe you,” I say, but my voice is wrong. Too thin. Too desperate.
“You don’t have to believe me.” Rachel moves toward the door, perfectly casual, like she hasn’t just detonated a bomb in the middle of my chest. “But you know I’m right. He’s been choosing me for years anyway. The only difference is now you finally have to face it.”
“Get out.”
“The hotels, the late nights, the trips where I was always there and you were always home.” She ticks them off like items on a list. “Did you really think all of that was innocent? That he just happened to need her in every city, every weekend, every emergency?”
“I said get out.”
“I’m going.” She pauses at the door. “But I want you to think about something, Maren. You filed separation papers. You’re already leaving him. So why does this bother you so much?”
Because I thought there was one thing left.
Because I thought the marriage might be dying but at least it was ours.
Because I’m carrying his child and I can’t even look at the timeline without wanting to scream.
That last thought slips out before I can catch it. “While I’m carrying his child, you want me to-”
I stop.
Rachel stops.
The silence is so complete I can hear the refrigeration unit humming in the back.
“You’re pregnant,” Rachel says.
“Get out of my shop.”
“Does Rhodes know?”
“Get out.”
“He doesn’t.” Rachel laughs, and it’s the ugliest sound I’ve ever heard. “Oh my God. You haven’t told him.” She looks at me with something that might be pity if it weren’t so poisonous. “Are you going to tell him now? Now that you can’t even be sure what the timeline means?”
“What timeline?”
“I’m just saying.” Rachel opens the door, letting in a gust of autumn air. “The hotel trip was three weeks before you left him. If you’re just finding out you’re pregnant now, that puts conception right around-”
“Stop.”
“the same time.”
I’m going to be sick. I’m going to throw up right here, in the middle of my shop, and she’s going to watch me do it with that satisfied smile on her face.
“Get out,” I say, and this time my voice is barely a whisper. “Get out of my shop and don’t ever come back.”
Rachel leaves. The bell chimes behind her like nothing’s wrong. Like the whole world hasn’t just cracked open.
I make it to the door, flip the lock, turn the sign to CLOSED, then walk through the back room, past the coolers, past the supply closet, into the tiny bathroom with its chipped tile and its flickering fluorescent light.
Then I drop to my knees and throw up until there’s nothing left.
When I’m done, I sit on the cold floor with my back against the wall and my hand pressed flat against my stomach. My heart is racing, my head pounding, my mouth full of bile and something sharper, something that might be betrayal.
I do the math.
The reconciliation night was five weeks ago.
We were still together then, before the gala - Rhodes came to the shop and begged me to talk, and we ended up at home, ended up in bed, ended up creating something I didn’t know about until a week ago, when a missed period turned into a positive test turned into my whole life rearranging itself around a secret I wasn’t ready to share.
Five weeks ago.
The hotel trip Rachel mentioned, the one where the photo was taken, the one where she claims they slept together, was five and a half weeks ago.
The timeline doesn’t work. If she’s telling the truth, if Rhodes really did sleep with her during that trip, then he came home to me only days later and made love to me like I was the only woman in the world.
And I believed him.
I believed every word he said. Every apology.
Every promise. I believed him when he said he’d do better, try harder, be the husband I deserved.
I believed him enough to let him back into my body, and now there’s a baby growing inside me that might have been conceived within days of him touching someone else.
The cruelest part isn’t that Rachel told me.
The cruelest part is that until today, I really did believe him.
I sit on that bathroom floor for a long time. Long enough for the fluorescent light to give me a headache, for my legs to go numb, for the nausea to fade into something duller and heavier, something that settles in my chest like a stone.
When I finally stand up, my reflection in the mirror looks like a stranger. Pale skin. Dark circles. Eyes that are too bright and too flat at the same time.
I put my hand over my stomach again.
“I don’t know what to do,” I whisper to the baby who can’t hear me yet. “I don’t know what’s true anymore.”
The fluorescent light flickers.
Somewhere in the shop, my phone buzzes with a text.
I don’t look at it.
There’s no need to look. I already know who it’s from.