9. Killian
— ? —
Killian
Without them in it, the house was simply wrong, every room the incorrect temperature.
I’d tried sleeping in our bed. Lasted barely any time before the emptiness of it drove me out of the room.
I’d tried the couch, but I could still see the spot where Sabrina used to curl up with her book, and that was worse.
I’d tried my office, but every surface was covered with work I didn’t care about anymore.
Eventually I ended up on the floor of Ivy’s room, wedged between her bed and the wall of stuffed animals she’d been accumulating since birth. The carpet smelled of her shampoo, that strawberry stuff she insisted on because the bottle was molded into a mermaid.
I lay there staring at the glow-in-the-dark stars we’d stuck to the ceiling together, waiting for my chest to loosen enough to let air in.
The front door opened early. I heard footsteps, then voices, then the creak of the stairs.
Mom appeared in the doorway of Ivy’s room. She took one look at me on the floor and her face fell.
“Oh, honey.”
“Don’t.” I sat up, my back screaming in protest. “Don’t give me the pity voice.”
“It’s not pity. It’s concern.” She stepped over me and set a container on Ivy’s dresser. “I brought breakfast. Your father’s downstairs. So are Tessa and Sully.”
“I don’t want to talk to anyone.”
“Too bad. We’re staging an intervention.”
“I’m not an addict.”
“No, you’re an idiot. That’s worse.” She held out her hand. “Come on. Up. You can’t fix your marriage lying on your daughter’s floor.”
I let her pull me to my feet. My whole body ached, and not just from the carpet. I felt hollowed out, everything important scooped out of my chest and only the shell left.
Downstairs, Dad was sitting at the kitchen table with his hands folded in front of him and that expression on his face. The one that said he was disappointed but wouldn’t say it out loud. The one that was somehow worse than anything he could have articulated.
Tessa and Sully were by the door, and Sully was carrying something large and white.
“Is that my whiteboard?”
“Yep.” He propped it against the wall. “Stole it from your office. You’re welcome.”
“Why do you have my whiteboard?”
“Because we’re going to fix this.” Tessa uncapped a marker and wrote OPERATION KILLIAN IS A DUMBASS across the top in aggressive capital letters. “And we’re going to do it systematically.”
“That’s not a real operation name.”
“It is now.” She pointed the marker at me. “Sit down.”
I sat. Mom put a plate of food in front of me, and I stared at it without eating.
“First things first.” Tessa drew a vertical line down the middle of the board. “On the left, what you said. On the right, what you meant. Because clearly there’s been some miscommunication.”
“I don’t want to do this.”
“I don’t care what you want. Your wife thinks you regret marrying her. We’re going to figure out what you actually meant and then we’re going to fix it.”
Sully dropped into the chair across from me. “She’s terrifying when she’s like this. Just go with it.”
I looked at my family, gathered around me with their concerned faces and their whiteboard and their breakfast containers. They were trying to help. They were doing exactly what the Kerringtons always did when one of them was in crisis: they showed up.
“Fine.” I rubbed my face with my hands. “What do you want me to say?”
“Tell us exactly what you said to Sully that night. Word for word.”
I closed my eyes and tried to remember. It had only been a few days, but it felt much longer.
“I said she’s been different since the miscarriage. That she used to have so much fire, and now she seems dimmed. I said I wonder sometimes if she’d still have her fire if she’d never said yes to me. If she’d be happier with someone who could actually show up for her.”
Tessa wrote it on the left side of the board. I watched my words appear in her sharp handwriting, and they looked even worse on paper than they had in my head.
“Okay. Now tell us what you actually meant.”
“I meant…” I stopped. Took a breath. Started again.
“I meant that I’ve watched her grow smaller and sadder over the last two years, and I know it’s my fault.
I meant that I’ve failed her over and over, and every time I fail her she closes off a little more.
I meant that I hate myself for what I’ve done to her, and sometimes I wonder if she’d be happier if she’d never met me at all. ”
“So you were blaming yourself.”
“Yes.”
“Not saying you don’t want her.”
“The opposite.” My voice cracked. “I want her so much that I can’t function without her. I’ve wanted her since the night we met. The idea of not being married to her is the only problem I’ve ever been unable to look at directly.”
Tessa wrote all of this on the right side of the board. She stepped back and studied it.
“See the problem?”
“I see a lot of problems.”
“The problem is that you’re an idiot who doesn’t know how to communicate.” She smacked me upside the head with her free hand. “You said words that sounded like regret. She heard words that sounded like regret. But what you actually felt was guilt.”
“I know.”
“Do you? Because if you knew, you’d have opened with ‘I feel guilty about how I’ve treated you’ instead of ‘maybe you’d be happier without me.’”
“I was talking to Sully, not to her. I didn’t think she was listening.”
“That doesn’t matter. You need to learn to say what you mean in a way that can’t be misinterpreted.” She capped the marker and crossed her arms. “Then go use the billion-dollar brain and fix it, you absolute weapon.”
Dad cleared his throat. We all turned to look at him.
“Your mother and I have been married a long time,” he said quietly. “And in that time, I’ve learned one thing. Actions matter more than words. You can apologize until you’re blue in the face, but if your behavior doesn’t change, the apology means nothing.”
“I know that.”
“Then prove it. Not with grand gestures or expensive gifts. With consistency. With showing up every day and doing the work.”
I looked at Mom. She was watching me with those sharp eyes that had always seen right through me.
“I love her,” I said. “I know I’ve been terrible at showing it. I know I’ve prioritized work over her and Ivy. But I love her more than anything in the world.”
“Then fight for her.” Mom’s voice was firm. “Not in some dramatic, movie-moment way. Fight for her by being the husband she deserves. By putting in the effort every single day.”
I nodded slowly. The paralysis of the last few days was giving way to focus.
“I need a plan.”
“Obviously.” Tessa gestured at the whiteboard. “That’s why we’re here.”
“Not that kind of plan.” I stood up and walked to the window, my mind already racing. “A real plan. A comprehensive plan that shows her I’ve been paying attention all along, even when it didn’t seem like it.”
Sully frowned. “What do you mean?”
I pulled out my phone and opened my notes app. The file I was looking for was buried under a dozen work documents, but I found it.
Things I Know About Sabrina Kerrington.
I’d started the list the week after we met.
Every detail she’d ever mentioned, every preference she’d ever expressed, every small thing I’d noticed about her.
Her coffee order. Her favorite book. The way she cracked her knuckles when she was nervous.
The specific shade of blue she said was her favorite, which wasn’t regular blue but something called cerulean that she’d explained to me once while we were lying in bed watching the sky through the window.
The list had grown over the years. Whenever she mentioned something she liked, I added it. Whenever I noticed a new habit, I wrote it down. I couldn’t help it. My brain filed her away without asking my permission and never let a single piece of it go.
“I have a file,” I said slowly. “On my phone. Things I know about Sabrina.”
“What kind of things?” Tessa asked.
“Everything. Her favorite food when she’s stressed versus her favorite food when she’s happy.
The way she organizes her books by color instead of author because it ‘looks better,’ even though it drives me crazy.
The exact spot on her back that makes her melt when you scratch it.
The songs she listens to when she’s sad.
The fact that she always orders the same thing at restaurants because trying new food makes her anxious but she doesn’t want anyone to think she’s boring. ”
My family was staring at me.
“You have a list,” Sully said flatly.
“Several, technically.”
“Of everything you know about your wife.”
“Yes.”
“How long is it?”
I scrolled through the document. “A few hundred entries. Maybe more.”
The disbelief went out of Tessa’s face and left tenderness behind. “You’ve been paying attention the whole time.”
“Of course I have. I just…” I trailed off, trying to find the words.
“I get distracted. My brain goes in a hundred directions at once, and I lose track of time, and I miss things that should be obvious. But I never stopped noticing her. I’ve never stopped cataloging every detail because she’s the most interesting person I’ve ever met. ”
“Does she know this?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“Then show her.” Mom stood up and gripped my shoulder. “Show her that she’s been the focus of your attention even when it didn’t seem like it.”
I opened a new document. Titled it Things I Love About Sabrina Kerrington.
The words started flowing before I could stop them.
Her laugh. Her brain. The way she argued with me about everything and made me smarter in the process.
The way she looked at Ivy with so much love it made my chest hurt.
The way she read my research papers and asked questions nobody else thought to ask.
Her terrible cooking. Her even worse singing.
The fact that she’d married me even though I was a disaster of a human being who couldn’t remember to come home for dinner.
The list grew and grew. I couldn’t stop.
Then, without thinking about it, I pulled a sheet of paper off the pad by the coffee maker and uncapped a pen.
Things I Hate About Sabrina.
Tessa looked over my shoulder. “What the hell is that?”
“I’m being comprehensive.”
“You’re listing things you hate about your wife. While trying to win her back.”
“It’s not really hate. It’s more like minor grievances.”
I started writing.
Four entries. It took me almost no time at all, and then I sat there staring at the page, because there was nothing honest left to add and I had tried. Every line on it was either a thing I’d swallowed for years without complaining or a thing I’d done to her and disguised as a complaint about her.
The list was short. Pathetically short compared to the other two.
I read it back once, and it held. Then I folded it in half and put it in my pocket.
“Okay,” I said. “I have a plan.”
“Care to share?” Sully asked.
“Relentless, not grand. No big gestures that look good but don’t mean anything. Just consistent, daily proof that I’m paying attention. That I’ve always been paying attention.”
“And if she doesn’t respond?”
“Then I keep going. I’m not giving up on her. I told her that, and I meant it.”
Tessa was watching me, almost proud. “The billion-dollar brain finally kicks into gear.”
“Better late than never.”
I walked to the whiteboard and picked up the marker. Crossed out OPERATION KILLIAN IS A DUMBASS and wrote something new.
Operation Not Losing Her.
“Catchy,” Sully said drily.
“It’s accurate.”
Sully had started in on my untouched breakfast. Tessa was capping and uncapping the marker without noticing she was doing it, the way she had since she was a kid.
“Thank you,” I said. “For showing up. For not giving up on me.”
“We’re Kerringtons.” Mom squeezed my arm. “We don’t give up on family.”
I nodded. Then I picked up my phone and opened the lists again.
She thought I didn’t notice her. Thought I’d stopped paying attention years ago.
I was going to prove her wrong.