The Absent Husband (The Groveling Husbands #1)

Prologue

Lily

The eggs are done before the first footstep hits the stairs.

Liam gets his scrambled. Ava gets hers fried, the yolk soft...

the way she pretends she does not care about anymore now that she is twelve and full of opinions.

Nora's plate needs the pieces cut small.

She still chokes if she rushes. My throat tightens as the knife hits the ceramic, a small shake of my head following the quiet sigh that escapes before I can stop it.

I do these things on autopilot. I have been doing them so long the movements belong to my hands, not my brain.

I pack the lunches. I wipe down the counters. I call upstairs twice before the ceiling creaks.

Noah’s side of the mattress is already cold...

he left before five. I heard the front door click, but I kept my eyes closed.

Years ago, I would have been on his heels.

I would have padded down the hallway in his oversized button-down, leaning into his side while the coffee brewed.

He used to press a kiss into my hair without looking up from his phone...

small loops of time that knit together until they look like a marriage.

I do not know when the loop broke.

"Mom, I can't find my left shoe." Liam stands at the base of the stairs, one sock sliding off his heel, his hair mashed flat against his crown.

"Hall closet, second shelf."

"Why is it in the—"

"Second shelf, Liam."

He vanishes. I turn the faucet on and reach for the sponge.

***

By seven forty-five, the car doors slam shut.

Nora is already half-asleep against the nylon straps of her car seat.

Ava stares out the window, thumb flicking across her phone screen with that heavy, deliberate silence of a teenager who has decided she does not need her mother today.

First Liam drops off. Then Ava. I double back toward Riverside for preschool, where Miss Dana reaches into the backseat and lifts Nora out.

My youngest goes without a single tear...

it should feel like a small victory. Mostly, it just feels like another hand letting go.

I drive back in silence.

The house waits for me, quiet and completely hollowed out.

I am rinsing the skillet when the ceramic coffee mug slips from my fingers.

It is the blue one... Noah’s favorite. The one his mother brought back from a coastal trip years ago, the one I always wash by hand.

It strikes the divider of the stainless sink, cracking clean across the base.

A jagged piece bites into the meat of my palm.

I hiss, jerking my hand back against my ribs.

Blood wells up, bright and fast. It is not a deep wound, but the warmth of it against my skin breaks something inside.

The first tear hits the edge of the sink before I even realize my chest is tight.

The kitchen disappears behind a blur. The exhaustion of identical mornings catches up all at once, pressing down on my shoulders until the small room feels entirely empty. I am completely alone in this house.

I stumble into the downstairs bathroom to rinse the cut under the cold tap. The water runs pink down the drain. I look up, and there she is... the woman in the mirror.

I stare at her for a long time.

Her eyes are wet, the skin beneath them shadowed in a way that sleep cannot fix.

There are fine lines tracking toward her temples that were not there a few summers ago.

Her hair is yanked back into a knot... functional, quick, meant to keep strands out of the pancake batter.

The gray pullover she wears belongs to that graveyard of clothes kept only because no one important will see them.

The tears come harder now, hot and silent.

My mind drifts back to a Friday night a lifetime ago, sitting in the passenger seat of Noah’s old sedan.

We talked for hours through the fogged windows about the life we would build, how incredible it would be once we finally shared a ceiling.

And it was true. It was beautiful for those first few years.

But after the babies arrived, the shift happened slowly.

He quietly built a life that did not require my presence.

I became the infrastructure... the helper who kept the gears greased while he moved forward.

The conversations dried up because his mind was always in a different room, a different city, a different meeting.

She is staring back at me from the glass. She turns forty today.

I turn off the faucet. The towel absorbs the pink water, and I press a clean square of cotton against the palm until the throbbing slows. I blink away the moisture, swallowing down the lump in my throat. I smooth my hair down. Forty is just a number, I tell the reflection. You are still here.

My eyes shift to the corner of the mirror frame. The yellow Post-it note remains, its edges curled inward from the bathroom steam. The handwriting is sharp, written by a version of me who still used ink to dream.

By 40:- Senior journalist role- Italy. Japan. Anywhere.- The yellow dress. Wear it somewhere with Noah.- Feel like yourself again.

I look at the ink, and I sigh.

Not one line is crossed off.

Noah’s list is finished. I watched him do it from this exact tile floor...

the corner office, the network contract, the flights to Dubai, the Tokyo conference panels where people leaned in to hear him speak.

I stayed behind to hold the walls up, and somewhere in the years of watching him move, I forgot that my own feet could walk.

A sudden heat flares behind my ribs... a spark of something old and angry.

Then I take a long breath. I let the air out slowly, folding the anger down into that small, dark place where I keep everything else.

But already I feel the tears coming back. “uurgh what’s wrong with my eyes!” I say as my lips quiver.

***

Noah appears on the screen at nine forty.

He looks effortlessly handsome... dark wool suit, impeccably tailored, shoulders relaxed in a posture of absolute confidence.

To the millions watching, it reads as authority.

To me, it used to read as home. The anchors share a laugh at something he says, and he leans back into his chair, letting the studio noise swell around him.

The redhead, Dana, leans over the desk with a sharp glint in her eyes. "Noah, we have to ask. You and Celeste have incredible on-screen chemistry. The audience is completely obsessed... is there something more there?"

My throat tightens. I remember the evening I told him Celeste looked at him with too much hunger.

He had scoffed, calling it television chemistry...

a tactic to drive up the ratings. What about me?

I had asked. He barely glanced up from his briefcase before dropping the words that always ended the conversation: Please, Lily, I do not have time for your antics.

I spent that night weeping into the guest bedroom pillows, not because of the accusation, but because the one person who promised to shield me was the one holding the blade.

On the couch, I unlock my phone and open the network’s live stream feed. The comment section scrolls by in a blur of real-time text.

they literally finish each other's sentences

Celeste looks at him like—

Noah and Celeste for the WIN someone manifest this

On screen, Noah flashes the slow, measured smile he uses when he needs to buy a few seconds of thinking time. "Celeste is a colleague," he says. "A wonderful one. I don't have anything else to say on the matter."

He never says no.

The screen keeps scrolling.

Did anyone else notice he didn't say no?

I drop the phone face down onto the cushion. I sit completely still.

After a long minute, I press the heels of my hands into my eyes, wiping away the moisture.

I look at Dana’s smooth, styled hair on the screen.

The remote feels cool in my palm as I click the power button, killing the feed.

The television screen goes black, reflecting the quiet room and the long strands falling over my shoulders. I need a haircut.

I grab my keys from the hook by the door.

***

The salon downtown smells of ammonia and burnt oil. The stylist twists a lock of my hair between her fingers, asking what we are doing today. I look at myself in the mirror under the harsh fluorescent lights, then look down at the heavy plastic booklet he drops into my lap.

He flips the pages open, revealing rows of small, synthetic hair swatches glossy against the white paper.

His finger traces a line of dark tones, pausing on a section labeled warm chestnuts and deep espressos.

"Something like these would bring out your eyes," he says, tilting the book toward the mirror light.

I run my thumb over a rich, dark swatch with gold undertones. It looks exactly like the hair I had when Noah and I first met.

"Shoulder length," I say. My voice does not shake. "And this shade. Exactly this brown." I say pointing to the lighter brown shade.

The first snip of the shears echoes near my ear.

Dark clumps fall into my lap, hitting the plastic cape like dead leaves.

With every cut, my chest loosens. By the time the blow dryer roars to life, a woman I haven't seen in fifteen years stares back at me.

Her jawline looks sharper. Her eyes look alive.

While the dye sets, I dial my mother’s number.

"Mom? I need a favor," I say, watching the assistant sweep my old identity off the floor. "Can you take the kids tonight? It’s our anniversary. I'm making dinner."

"Of course, Lily," her voice crackles through the speaker. "Is everything alright? You sound... different."

"Everything is fine," I lie, staring at the mirror. "I just changed my hair."