17. Elise
— ? —
Elise
The floodwaters begin to recede on the third day.
It happens slowly at first, an inch here, an inch there, but by afternoon, the lower level of the cabin is merely damp instead of submerged. We spend hours mopping and moving furniture back, working in shifts to avoid being in the same room for too long.
The tension in this cabin has become a living thing. It breathes in the silences between us, coils in the corners, waits for someone to make a wrong move.
Simon has been quiet since his mother left. Too quiet. He helps with the cleanup without complaint, makes his own meals, retreats to his room at night. The angry drunk who threw punches has been replaced by someone controlled and watchful.
I don’t trust it for a second.
“He’s planning something,” I tell Rowan while we’re hauling waterlogged rugs out to the porch. “I can feel it.”
“Probably. But there’s not much he can do at this point.” Rowan drops his end of the rug with a wet thud. “You’ve made your position clear. He can scheme all he wants. It won’t change anything.”
“You don’t know him like I do. When Simon wants something, he doesn’t give up. He just finds a different angle.”
“Then we deal with whatever angle he finds.” Rowan wipes his hands on his jeans. “Together.”
Together. The word sounds nice. I’m still not sure I believe in it.
***
The angle comes that evening.
I’m in the kitchen, making a simple dinner from what’s left in the pantry, when Simon appears in the doorway. He’s showered, shaved, wearing a clean shirt. He looks more like himself than he has in days.
That’s what worries me.
“Can we talk?” he asks. “Just the two of us?”
“We don’t have anything to talk about.”
“Please.” The word comes out soft, almost humble. “Ten minutes. That’s all I’m asking.”
I should say no. Should walk past him and find Rowan and not give Simon another opportunity to manipulate me.
But part of me wants to hear what he has to say. Wants to understand what angle he’s working, so I can defend against it.
“Ten minutes,” I say. “In here. Door stays open.”
He nods and takes a seat at the kitchen table. I stay standing, keeping the counter between us.
“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking,” he begins. “About us. About what went wrong. About the mistakes I made.”
“Mistakes.” My voice is flat. “Plural now. We’ve had this argument already, Simon. Say what you actually came to say.”
“You’re right.” He holds up his hands. “You’re right, and I’m not trying to minimize it. What I did was wrong. Unforgivable, maybe. But I need you to understand something.”
“What?”
“It was never about not loving you.” His voice cracks slightly, and I can’t tell if it’s genuine or performed. “I never stopped loving you, Elise. The affair, it was a weakness. A failing. But it didn’t mean I loved you any less.”
“That’s not how love works.”
“Maybe not. But it’s the truth.” He leans forward. “She didn’t mean anything to me. Not really. It was physical, it was an escape, but it was never…” He shakes his head. “It was never what we had.”
“What we had.” I laugh, and the sound is bitter. “What we had was me giving everything to a marriage while you gave your attention to someone else. What we had was me feeling crazy for noticing something was wrong while you gaslit me into doubting my own instincts.”
“I know. I know, and I’m sorry…”
“You keep saying you’re sorry, but you don’t actually understand what you’re apologizing for.
” I grip the edge of the counter. “It’s not just the sex, Simon.
It’s not just that you were physically unfaithful.
It’s that you let her into our life. You let her comfort me about your distance while she was the reason for it.
You let her be my friend while she was betraying me. ”
“She wasn’t…” He stops. Recalibrates. “I never asked her to do that. To befriend you. That was her choice.”
“But you didn’t stop it either. You watched her pretend to be my friend, knowing what she really was, and you said nothing.”
“What was I supposed to say?”
“Anything! Anything would have been better than letting me confide in her about our marriage problems while she was causing them.” My voice is rising despite myself.
“Do you have any idea how that feels? Finding out that every conversation I had with her, every time I cried on her shoulder about how distant you’d become, she was going home and laughing about it with you? ”
“She wasn’t laughing…”
“How do you know? Were you there for every conversation she had about me?”
Simon’s jaw tightens. “She’s not a monster, Elise.”
“No, she’s worse. A monster I would have seen coming.” I take a breath, trying to steady myself. “Your ten minutes are almost up. Is there a point to this conversation, or did you just want to defend your mistress to my face?”
“I want you to come home.” The words come out raw, desperate. “I know I already asked. I know what you said. I’m asking again anyway, because I don’t know how to stop.”
“No.”
“Elise…”
“No. I’ve already told you…”
“Just think about it. Please.” He stands, moving closer. “All those memories, all those plans we made. You can’t tell me none of that meant anything.”
“It meant everything. That’s why this hurts so much.” I back up as he advances. “But meaning something isn’t the same as being worth saving. Some things break too badly to be fixed.”
“I don’t believe that. I can’t believe that.” His voice is thick with emotion. “You’re my wife. I love you. And I know, I know, that if you just gave me a chance to prove myself, I could make this right.”
His phone buzzes on the table.
We both freeze.
It buzzes again. And again. Someone is calling, persistent and urgent.
Simon glances at the screen, and panic surfaces before he can shove it back down.
“You should get that,” I say.
“It can wait.”
“Can it?” I move toward the table. “Who’s calling you at nine o’clock at night, Simon? Work?”
“It’s nothing. Just…”
The phone stops buzzing. Then immediately starts again.
I’m faster than he is.
My hand closes around the phone before he can reach it, and I see the name on the screen: LILIA.
“Give me that.” His voice is sharp now, the humble penitent gone.
“Why? If she doesn’t mean anything to you, why can’t I answer?”
“Elise, don’t…”
I swipe to answer and hit the speaker button.
“…finally! I’ve been trying to reach you for days.” Lilia’s voice fills the kitchen, familiar and strange at the same time. “Your mother called me. Told me to keep my mouth shut and my distance until the divorce goes through quietly. What the hell is going on up there?”
Simon’s face has gone white.
“Hello, Lilia,” I say.
Silence. Then: “Elise?”
“Surprise.” I keep my voice light, pleasant, the way she always kept hers when she was lying to my face. “Simon was just telling me how little you meant to him. How the affair was just physical. Just an escape. Nothing serious.”
“Simon?” Lilia’s voice is sharp. “What is she talking about? What did you tell her?”
“Lilia, hang up…” Simon starts.
“He told me you didn’t mean anything.” I cut him off. “He told me he never stopped loving me. That what you two had was nothing compared to our marriage.” I pause. “Funny, that’s not what your texts said. The ones I found on his phone.”
“What texts?” Lilia’s voice has gone cold. “Simon, what the fuck is she talking about?”
“The texts where you called me boring.” I’m guessing now, but the flinch on Simon’s face tells me I’ve hit close to home. “The ones where you laughed about how clueless I was. The ones where you planned your little getaways while I thought he was working late.”
“I never…” Lilia starts.
“Don’t bother lying. I’ve seen them.” I haven’t, actually. But Simon doesn’t know that. “I know exactly what you said about me. Both of you.”
The silence stretches.
Then Lilia laughs. And it’s not a nice laugh.
“God, Simon. When you called me from up there, you swore she still didn’t know it was me. You said she just knew about the affair, not who with.” Her voice drips with contempt. “You said we had time to figure out how to handle this.”
“Lilia…”
“You promised me you were going to leave her. That’s what you said, remember?
As soon as the timing was right. As soon as you figured out the finances.
” She’s fully ranting now, all pretense abandoned.
“I waited for over a year, Simon. I lied to my best friend for over a year because you said we were going to be together.”
I feel like the floor has dropped out from under me.
He promised to leave me. He wasn’t just cheating. He was planning an exit. For over a year.
“Is that true?” My voice comes out strange. “You were going to leave me?”
Simon’s mouth opens and closes. No words come out.
“Of course it’s true.” Lilia’s voice is vicious now, a woman scorned.
“He told me our whole relationship that you were the obstacle. That he’d married too young, before he knew what he wanted.
That as soon as he figured out how to do it without destroying his reputation, he was going to file for divorce and we’d be together. ”
“Lilia, shut up…”
“No. You know what? I’m done shutting up.
” She’s crying now, I can hear it in her voice.
“I gave you everything, Simon. I ruined my friendship with Elise, I lied to everyone I knew, I put my whole life on hold waiting for you to keep your promises. And now you’re trying to win her back? After everything?”
“It’s complicated…”
“It’s not complicated. You’re a coward.” Lilia’s voice breaks. “You were always a coward. You wanted both of us, and you didn’t have the guts to choose, so you just kept lying until it all fell apart.”
“That’s not…”
I hang up.
The silence that follows is deafening.
Simon stands frozen, his face gray, looking at me like I’m a bomb about to detonate.
“You were going to leave me.” My voice is barely above a whisper. “For over a year, you were planning to leave me.”
“Elise…”
“Everything you just said, about loving me, about the affair meaning nothing, about wanting to try again, it was all bullshit.” I’m shaking now, rage and grief tangling together until I can’t tell which is which. “You weren’t trying to save our marriage. You were trying to save your options.”
“That’s not fair…”
“Fair?” The word explodes out of me. “You want to talk about fair? You told your mistress you were going to divorce me. You let her believe you were building a future together. And then when she became inconvenient, you tried to crawl back to me like none of it happened.”
“I changed my mind…”
“When? When did you change your mind? When she started pressuring you for a timeline? When staying started to look better than leaving?” I laugh, high and wild.
“God, I’m such an idiot. I actually felt guilty.
For Rowan. For moving on while our marriage was still technically intact.
And the whole time, you’d already left me in every way that mattered. ”
“Elise, please…”
“Get out.”
“What?”
“Get out of this kitchen. Get out of my sight.” My voice is cold now, all the heat burned away. “I don’t want to hear any more of your excuses. I don’t want to see your face. I want you to go to your room and stay there until we can leave this goddamn cabin.”
“We need to talk about this…”
“No. We really don’t.” I pick up his phone and throw it at him. He catches it reflexively. “You should call Lilia back. Sounds like you two have a lot to discuss.”
I walk out of the kitchen and don’t look back.
***
Rowan is in the hallway, his expression tight with concern.
“I heard,” he says quietly. “Most of it.”
“Then you know.” I push past him toward the stairs. “You know what he was doing. What they were both doing.”
“Elise…”
“Not now.” My voice cracks. “I can’t… I need to be alone. I need to process this.”
“Okay.” He doesn’t follow me. “I’m here when you’re ready.”
I make it to my room before the tears come.