7. Sabrina
— ? —
Sabrina
Salt and old wood and someone else’s life: that was what the cabin smelled like, and none of it was home.
I sat on the edge of the bed and watched Ivy sleep, her small body curled around the elephant blanket, her breathing slow and even.
She’d been confused when I’d buckled her into the car at the Kerringtons’, had asked sleepy questions about where we were going and why Daddy wasn’t coming, and I’d answered with lies that turned to ash on my tongue.
An adventure, I’d told her. A special mommy-and-Ivy trip.
She’d accepted it because she was five and she trusted me, and that trust was a weight I wasn’t sure I could carry.
She hadn’t stayed asleep, though. An hour after I’d put her down she’d padded out to the couch in her socks, dragging the elephant blanket, and climbed into my lap without a word.
I’d thought she wanted water, or a bad dream chased away.
Instead she’d pressed her face into my neck and asked the question in the small, careful voice she used when she already suspected the answer was bad.
“Is Daddy coming tomorrow?”
“Not tomorrow, baby.”
She’d thought about that. I could feel her thinking, the way you can feel a change in the weather.
“The day after tomorrow?”
“I don’t know, sweetheart.”
A long silence. Then, so quietly I almost missed it: “Is it because I didn’t clean up my blocks?”
It took everything I had not to come apart right there on the ugly rental couch.
Because of course. Of course that was where her five-year-old logic had landed.
The world had cracked down the middle and the only explanation that made sense to her was that she had done something wrong, left something out of place, and if she could only figure out what, she could fix it and put us all back together.
“No, Ivy. No, no, no.” I pulled her tight and pressed my lips to her hair and held her until she stopped being so still.
“It’s not because of you. It’s never, ever because of you.
You didn’t do anything. Mommy and Daddy just have some grown-up things to sort out, and none of them, not one single one, is your fault. Do you hear me?”
“Okay,” she’d said, in the way children say okay when they want to believe you and aren’t quite sure they can.
I’d held her until she fell asleep against my chest, and then I’d carried her back to bed, and then I’d stood in the dark hallway and hated Killian and hated myself and hated the whole impossible situation with a fierceness that scared me.
The rental was tiny. One bedroom, a bathroom barely big enough to turn around in, a kitchen that doubled as a living room.
The furniture was mismatched and worn, the sort people donated when they upgraded to something nicer.
But it was clean, and it was available immediately, and it was far enough from the main house that I wouldn’t have to see Killian unless I chose to.
I didn’t want to see him. I didn’t want to hear his explanations or his apologies or his promises to do better. I’d heard all of it before, and none of it had changed anything.
Maybe she’d still have her fire if she’d never said yes to me.
The words played on a loop in my head, and every repetition carved them deeper.
Ivy shifted in her sleep, and I smoothed her hair back from her face. She looked so much like him. The same dark hair, the same sharp cheekbones, the same way her brow furrowed when she was concentrating. In her face I could see a version of Killian who still believed in me.
I stood up carefully and walked to the bathroom. The mirror above the sink showed me a woman I barely recognized. Pale skin, red-rimmed eyes, hair that hadn’t been brushed properly in days. I looked exactly like what I was, a woman who’d been crying for hours.
I turned on the shower and waited for the water to heat up. The pipes groaned and clanked, and I wondered how long this place had been sitting empty before I’d found it.
The water was barely warm, but I stepped in anyway. I stood under the spray and let it run over my face, washing away the salt tracks of tears I didn’t remember crying. My hands found my stomach without conscious thought, pressing against the flat plane of it where a new life was growing.
I hadn’t told him. I’d been about to, so many times, and every time something had stopped me. His phone buzzing. His attention drifting. The fear that he wouldn’t care, or worse, that he’d care too much and then disappear anyway.
Now I was alone in a cabin with our daughter and our unborn child, and he didn’t even know.
The cramping hit without warning.
I gasped and grabbed the shower wall, my fingers slipping against the wet tile. The pain was sharp and low, a fist clenching deep in my pelvis. I pressed my hand harder against my stomach and tried to breathe through it.
Not again. Please, not again.
The last time had started like this. A cramp I’d dismissed as nothing, then another, then a rush of blood that had ended everything.
I’d been alone that time too, because Killian was at the lab, and by the time he’d gotten home I’d already lost the baby and most of my belief that our marriage could survive anything.
The pain eased. I stood there shaking under the lukewarm water, waiting for it to come back, waiting for the blood that would mean it was over.
Nothing came.
I stayed in the shower until the water ran cold, my hand pressed to my stomach, my breath coming in shallow gasps. When I finally stepped out and dried off, there was no blood. No more cramping. Just the bone-deep exhaustion of a body that had been through too much.
I wrapped myself in a towel and sat on the bathroom floor with my back against the door. Outside, I could hear Ivy talking in her sleep, some half-formed conversation with an imaginary friend.
The doctor had said rest and calm. I was doing a spectacular job at neither.
I put my head in my hands and let myself cry, quietly, so I wouldn’t wake my daughter.
***
The Juice Shack was Ivy’s favorite place on the island, and I couldn’t deny her anything right now.
We walked there the next morning, her small hand in mine, her chatter filling the silence I couldn’t seem to break. She told me about the dream she’d had, about the crab she wanted to find on the beach, about the very important question of whether mermaids had belly buttons.
“I think they do,” she said seriously. “Because they were babies once, and babies have belly buttons.”
“That’s solid logic.”
“Do you think Daddy knows about mermaid belly buttons?”
My chest tightened. “You can ask him next time you see him.”
“When is next time?”
“Soon, baby. I promise.”
The Juice Shack was crowded with the usual summer people, tourists in bright colors and locals in worn linen. I ordered Ivy’s strawberry smoothie and a green juice for myself that I probably wouldn’t finish, and we found a small table near the window.
Ivy was halfway through her smoothie when the door opened and Tessa walked in.
She spotted me immediately, and her face shifted. Relief, maybe, or worry. I couldn’t tell the difference anymore.
“Hey.” She slid into the chair across from me without asking. “I’ve been looking for you.”
“I’ve been around.”
“You’ve been hiding.”
“Hiding implies effort. I’m just existing in a different location.”
Tessa’s mouth twitched. “Same sharp tongue. Good. I was worried the rental might have broken you.”
“The rental is fine. Cozy. Character-building.”
“It looks like a fishing shack from the outside.”
“It’s rustic.”
“It’s a dump.”
“Auntie Tessa!” Ivy launched herself out of her chair and into Tessa’s arms. “Mommy said we’re on an adventure!”
“Did she?” Tessa hugged her tight and shot me a look over her head. “What kind of adventure?”
“The kind where we sleep in a tiny house and Mommy cries in the shower.”
My face went hot. Tessa’s expression softened.
“Ivy, sweetheart, why don’t you go look at the fish tank? I need to talk to your mommy about boring grown-up stuff.”
Ivy was already wiggling free, her attention captured by the promise of fish. She skipped across the café and pressed her face against the tank, fogging the glass with her breath.
Tessa turned back to me.
“How are you really?”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. You look like you haven’t slept in days.”
“I’m adjusting.”
“To what? Living in a shack while your husband loses his mind?”
“He’s losing his mind?”
“He slept on the floor of Ivy’s room last night. Mom found him there this morning when she came by with breakfast.”
I wanted to feel vindicated. Instead I sat there wondering whether anyone had thought to bring him a pillow.
“He made his choices,” I said.
“He made mistakes. There’s a difference.”
“Is there? Because from where I’m sitting, it looks like the same thing.”
Tessa reached across the table and took my hand. Her grip was warm and firm.
“I’m not here to defend him. I’m here to check on you. Whatever’s happening between you two, you’re still my friend. You’re still family. That doesn’t change just because my brother is an idiot.”
My eyes burned. I blinked hard.
“Thank you.”
“Have you been to the doctor? Since the cabin, I mean?”
“No.”
“Sabrina.”
“I’m fine. The baby’s fine. I had some cramping last night, but it passed.”
Tessa’s hand tightened on mine. “Cramping? Why didn’t you call me?”
“Because it was the middle of the night and I didn’t want to worry anyone.”
“I would have come. You know I would have come.”
“I know. That’s why I didn’t call.”
Tessa studied me, weighing whether to push. Then she sighed and sat back.
“You’re impossible. You know that, right?”
“I’ve been told.”
“Will you at least let me bring you dinner later? Real food, not whatever sad provisions you’ve stocked that cabin with.”
“The provisions are fine.”
“They’re canned soup and crackers. I checked the grocery delivery records.”
“That’s invasive.”
“That’s family.”
I laughed despite myself. It felt foreign in my throat.
“Fine. Bring dinner. But no lectures about Killian.”
“Deal.”
The door to the Juice Shack opened again, and the temperature in the room seemed to drop.
Cordelia Hayes walked in.
She was exactly what I remembered from the few photos I’d seen, and also entirely different.
Tall and willowy, with cheekbones that photographers loved and the rest of us resented.
Her hair was honey-blonde and perfectly styled, her dress worth more than everything I had on by a wide margin, and she moved through the café with the confidence of someone who’d never been told no in her life.
Tessa went rigid beside me.
“Shit,” she muttered.
Cordelia spotted us. Her face lit up with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
“Tessa! What a lovely surprise.” She glided over to our table and air-kissed Tessa’s cheek. “And this must be Sabrina. I’ve heard so much about you.”
“Have you.” My voice was flat.
“All good things, I promise. Well, mostly good things.” She laughed, a tinkling sound that set my teeth on edge. “I’m Cordelia. An old friend of the family.”
“I know who you are.”
“Do you? I wasn’t sure Killian would have mentioned me. He’s so focused on the present, isn’t he? Always moving forward, never looking back.” She tilted her head, studying me. “You look tired. Island life not agreeing with you?”
“Island life is fine. Is there something you need?”
“Just a smoothie. I’m meeting someone.”
“Someone.”
“Mm-hmm.” She turned to the counter and placed her order, and I watched her mouth form words that made my blood run cold.
A strawberry. And a large green with ginger, turmeric, spirulina, and a shot of wheatgrass.
I knew that order. I’d heard Killian place it more times than I could count, had mocked him mercilessly for his disgusting health concoctions. Nobody else ordered that specific combination of ingredients. Nobody.
For a second I just sat there with my hand wrapped around my untouched green juice, and Ivy’s abandoned strawberry smoothie sweating on the table between us seemed obscene.
My husband. She was buying my husband his stupid wheatgrass smoothie, the one I’d teased him about a hundred mornings, the one that was ours to laugh at, and the bottom of my stomach dropped straight through the floor of the café.
How could he. The thought arrived whole and childish and impossible to argue with.
How could he, how could he, after the storm of the last weeks, after every word out of his mouth about loving me since the day we met.
My eyes burned and I blinked hard, because I wasn’t going to cry in the Juice Shack with my daughter across the room pressing her face to a fish tank.
Cordelia turned back to us with a sweet smile.
“It was so nice to meet you, Sabrina. I’m sure we’ll see each other around. It’s such a small island.”
She collected her smoothies and walked out, and the noise of the café came back all at once, too loud.
Tessa grabbed my arm. “That doesn’t mean anything. She could be meeting anyone.”
“With Killian’s exact smoothie order?”
“It could be a coincidence.”
“You don’t believe that.”
Tessa took her time. “No. I don’t.”
I looked out the window and watched Cordelia climb into a car. She was holding both smoothies, and she was smiling.
Are they together?
The question burned through me, acid and ice at once.
I’d left him, sure. But I hadn’t thought he’d replace me this quickly. I hadn’t thought he’d run straight to his ex-girlfriend while claiming he still loved me.
Maybe I’d been wrong about everything.