Chapter 1
Noah
"Ava. Liam. Let's go."
No answer from upstairs. Just the sound of Iris moving around the kitchen, the soft thud of lunchboxes being snapped shut.
I check my watch. Seven twenty-two. I press two fingers to my temple and look up at the ceiling.
This was Lily's hour. I know that now. Seven to eight a.m. was hers...
the lunches, the uniforms, the specific knowledge of which child needed which breakfast, and which one would melt down if her socks had visible seams. I used to leave before five and tell myself the early start was for the family.
Now I stand in my own hallway at seven twenty-two, unable to get three kids out of the house on time, and I think about what that says about me.
Ten years, give or take. That's how long she ran this house alone before she stopped.
I push the thought down. "Ava."
"Coming." Her voice floats down from somewhere above my head, entirely unbothered by urgency.
She appears at the top of the stairs a moment later... thirteen going on forty, her backpack hanging off one shoulder, grabbing the sandwich Iris holds out without breaking stride. She brushes past me in the hallway and I catch the tail end of what she says under her breath.
"At least there's no burnt bread anymore."
I say nothing. She's not wrong.
Liam barrels down after her, one shoe untied, Nora right behind him at a full run even though we are going nowhere fast. I watch the two of them hit the dining room and somehow...
in the space of four minutes... turn it into a disaster zone.
Nora's juice cup tips. Liam's uniform shirt comes untucked before he has even put it on properly.
Someone's lunchbox ends up under the table.
I watch all of it and I think... how did she do this every single day without losing her mind?
"Okay. Coats. Now."
Nora finds my hand the second we step outside. Her small fingers wrap around two of mine, holding on as we walk to the car. I let her. I don't say anything about it, the contact making me feel better.
We're three blocks from Liam's school when Ava speaks from the back seat. "When are you and Mom going to talk?"
I keep my eyes on the road. "Ava—"
"You missed her birthday," Liam says. He says it matter-of-fact, no malice. Which somehow makes it worse.
"It's true," Nora confirms from her car seat, with the authority of someone who has been following this conversation very closely.
My hands rest on the steering wheel, my grip tightening until the leather creases.
"Kids." My voice comes out even. "We're here."
I pull up to the curb. Liam and Nora spill out. I'm already looking for a gap in traffic when Ava's door opens, and she pauses with one foot on the pavement, saying without looking back: "That's what you always do. That's how you made Mom leave."
She walks through the school gate before I can answer.
I sit with my hands on the wheel. Someone behind me honks.
I don't move. After a moment, I drop my forehead against my knuckles resting on the steering wheel and stay there.
The car smells faintly of the detangling spray Iris uses on Nora's hair...
I breathe through it until the tightness in my chest loosens enough that I can sit back up.
I laugh. It comes out short and strange, entirely without humor. Then I pull into traffic.
***
The divorce papers are in my top drawer.
I don't know why I keep them there. Maybe because leaving them at home felt worse... like letting the house hold them. So they came with me, and now they sit in the drawer under a project brief and a dead pen, and every few days I pull them out and look at the line where I'm supposed to sign.
I've been looking at that line for a year and a few months.
I set them on the desk now. I look at her handwriting on the yellow square still stuck to the front. Please sign. Two words. She always was efficient with language. It's one of the things I noticed first about her, the way she never used ten words when three would do.
The night she left plays behind my eyes.
I'd come home to a house with no sound in it.
Not the good kind of quiet... the other kind.
The kind that has a physical presence. I remember standing in the kitchen doorway and feeling the air differently, like something structural had been removed.
I remember going upstairs and opening the wardrobe and looking at the side where her things used to hang.
The hangers were all pushed together on the left because her half was empty...
I stood there with my hand on the rail and I couldn't breathe.
Funny thing. I'd spent years in that house barely noticing she was there. Then she left, and the place stopped making sense without her.
I'm still looking at the line. I close the drawer.
***
I don't hear Dana the first time.
I'm aware of movement at the office door... headphones around her neck, tablet in hand... but it's the visual equivalent of background noise. She crosses the room. She makes a gesture toward the hallway. Her mouth is moving.
I watch her like she's behind glass.
She waves her hand in front of my face.
I blink. The room comes back. Her voice appears louder, slicing through the fog. "—on in five," she's saying, already turning toward the door.
I follow her out. I'm most of the way down the hall when she stops, looks at me once, and turns us both back around.
"Give us five," she says to the floor manager. Then she steers me by the elbow back into the office and snaps her fingers once, close to my ear.
I look at her.
"Are we doing this before every show?" she asks.
I run a hand through my hair.
"Noah."
"I'm fine."
She gives me a look. Then she leans against the desk and crosses her arms and waits.
I sit down. And because there's no version of this I can explain that doesn't sound like what it is, I say nothing.
But something moves through my chest... the memory of her hair against my neck when she used to curl into me at night, the sound of her laughing at a joke I'd made that wasn't that funny, the way she held Ava as a newborn, her chin tucked over the baby's head, her eyes already going soft.
I try to find the same picture with Liam. With Nora.
I come up blank.
I look at Dana. "Where was I," I say slowly, "when Lily gave birth to our kids?"
She blinks. "What?"
"Where was I. When she had them."
Dana is quiet for a moment. "You had shows. Twice."
I nod like that's new information, even though somewhere I already knew it.
All of a sudden I am taken back to my truck on a night sixteen years ago...
both of us lying in the truck watching the sky, her shoulder against mine, me telling her I couldn't wait to be there for every time she gave birth.
I can't wait to be there, I'd said.
"She left," I say. It comes out quiet... almost like I'm still surprised by it.
Dana puts her hand briefly on my forearm. "Make efforts to get her back," she says. "But right now, time isn't on our side."
I stand. The makeup team reaches me before I clear the hallway.
When the camera starts rolling, a smile creeps onto my lips, and my mouth starts moving, my body already in tune with the job. It takes everything I have not to break.
When it's over, I walk straight back to my office and sit down and look at the wall.
Dana appears in the doorway a few minutes later. She leans against the frame, looks at me for a long moment, and then says plainly:
"You need to see a therapist."
I don't argue.