Chapter 6
Six
Caroline
The movers arrived at eight on the dot, three men in matching polos and a battered truck that looked like it had seen every tragedy the city had to offer. They wrapped my furniture in plastic, boxed up the last of the kitchen, and worked in silence except for the occasional thud or muffled curse.
I tried to help, but after an hour I realized I was just getting in the way.
So I wandered from room to room, touching the banister, the light switches, the smudge on the wall from when Adele drew a giraffe in permanent marker.
I ran my fingers along the windowsill in the living room, remembering how we used to line up snow globes from every vacation.
The dining room was empty now, but I could still hear the echoes of birthday parties, the clink of wine glasses, the sound of Richard laughing at his own jokes.
I didn’t cry. I told myself I wouldn’t. But when the men loaded the last box onto the truck and handed me the clipboard to sign, my hand shook so hard I could barely scrawl my own name.
I took one last lap through the house. The bedrooms were stripped of bedding and personality. The walls bare, full of nail holes and faint outlines where photos used to hang.
I stopped at the threshold of the master bedroom, took a breath, and closed the door behind me.
In the hallway, the movers waited by the front door, already halfway through their cigarettes and ready to move on to their next job. One of them—he looked barely old enough to shave—nodded to me with a kind of shy respect.
“Take care, ma’am,” he said, and then they were gone.
I stood in the foyer, keys in one hand and my wedding ring in the other.
The silence pressed in on me. I thought about leaving something behind, a note or a photo or even just a sock, so the new owners would know I’d lived here, that we were happy once.
But in the end, I just pocketed the keys and stepped outside.
I locked the door. It clicked with a finality that made my knees weak.
I didn’t look back.
At the same moment, across town, Noah sat in his upstairs office above the coffee shop, flipping through receipts and ticking off a mental checklist of deliveries. A knock at the door interrupted him.
One of his men—a stocky guy named Anthony—came in and placed a manila folder on the desk.
“Figured you’d want to see this. The Carter account.”
Noah glanced at the label, then at Anthony.
“I’ll deal with him later,” he said.
Anthony nodded, backed out, and closed the door behind him.
Noah stared at the folder for a moment, then tucked it into the bottom drawer and turned back to his espresso, letting the bitter aroma fill the small office.
On the drive to the new apartment, I kept expecting Richard to call, to apologize, to say he’d made a mistake. But my phone stayed silent, except for one text from Adele: “You got this. I love you.”
I pulled up to the building, a squat brick rectangle in the middle of nowhere, and climbed the stairs with arms full of boxes. The hallway smelled like onions and cigarette smoke. The apartment itself was exactly as advertised: two rooms, clean, nothing special.
I opened the windows, let the city noise drift in, and started unpacking.
I set up the coffeemaker first, then the bathroom, then made my bed with sheets I’d bought just for me.
I put my photos on the windowsill, the way I used to, and hung a single picture on the wall: Adele at age eight, missing a tooth, grinning like she knew a secret.
For the first time since all of this started, I felt something like relief. Not, hope, not yet. But at least the uncertainty was over.
Somewhere, in the city I was now a part of but no longer belonged to, Richard was building a new life, and Noah was plotting the next move that would set everything in motion.
I couldn’t see the collision coming. All I could do was wake up the next morning and try to start again.
I poured myself a cup of coffee, took a seat by the window, and watched the world go by.
And for the first time in weeks, I didn’t feel like I was drowning.