9. Josie
JOSIE
The tea in my hands had gone cold an hour ago, but I still held onto it.
Rosa sat across from me in her living room, waiting. She hadn't asked me anything yet. She'd just opened the door, taken one look at my face, and pulled me inside. Now she waited, patient as stone, while I stared at the cup like it might tell me what to say.
I didn't know where to start.
My thumb pressed against the side of the mug. The ceramic was smooth, cool. I wanted to drink it just to have something to do with my hands, but my throat felt tight and I knew I wouldn't be able to swallow.
"Josie," Rosa said quietly.
I looked up. God, her eyes were so kind it made everything worse. She wasn't pushing. She wasn't demanding. She was just there, ready to listen whenever I was ready to talk.
"I don't—" My voice cracked. I stopped, swallowed, tried again. "I don't know if I'm being crazy."
"You're not crazy." She said it immediately, like there was no question.
That made the tears come. I blinked them back, hard, and set the cup down on the table between us before I spilled it everywhere. My hands were shaking. I folded them in my lap and felt the iron ring press into my palm through the fabric of my pocket.
"Something happened today," I said.
Rosa leaned forward slightly. Listening.
"I took lunch to Vince's office." The words came out haltingly, like I had to pull each one free. "I wanted to surprise him. I thought maybe we could eat together, or maybe I could just—" I stopped. It sounded so stupid now, so naive. "I just wanted to see him."
"Okay," Rosa said.
"I got there and I heard him laughing." My chest tightened, remembering it. The sound had stopped me in the hallway, frozen me in place. "Through the door. I hadn't heard him laugh like that in months, Rosa. Not at home. Not with me. Not that easy, open laugh like something was actually funny."
Rosa's expression didn't change, but something shifted in her eyes. She knew. She already knew where this was going.
"I looked through the gap in the door," I said. My voice was barely above a whisper now. "And she was there. Harlow."
Rosa's jaw tightened at the name. Her whole body went rigid. "Harlow," she repeated, and the way she said it was like spitting out something rotten.
"She touched his arm," I said. The image was burned into my brain, clear as glass. "Her hand on his sleeve. Right there on his forearm. And he didn't pull away. He just—he just stood there, Rosa. He stood there and let her touch him and he was smiling. That same smile I used to get. Before."
"What did you do?" Rosa asked. Her voice was carefully controlled now, like she was holding something back.
"I left." The admission felt like failure. "I didn't go in. I didn't say anything. I just—I put the lunch bag down at the front desk with the receptionist and I walked out."
"The lunch bag," Rosa said slowly.
My hand went to my pocket again without me deciding to.
The iron ring was still there, solid and real.
The edges pressed into my palm. "I left the diamond ring in it," I said.
"The one he gave me to replace the first one.
I took it off in the elevator. Just pulled it off my finger and dropped it in the bag with the peppers and I left it there at the desk and I walked out. "
Rosa sat back in her chair. She didn't say anything for a long moment, just looked at me like she was trying to figure out what to say that wouldn't make it worse.
"I came home and I packed a bag," I said. My throat was getting tighter. "I didn't even think about it. I wasn't thinking at all. I just threw things in a duffel and I got in the car and I started driving and I didn't know where I was going. I ended up here."
"You can stay as long as you need," Rosa said immediately. "As long as you want. The guest room is yours."
"He's been calling." I looked down at my hands. They were still trembling. "Over and over. Twenty times, maybe more. I haven't answered."
"Good."
"Rosa—"
"What?" She leaned forward again, and there was something fierce in her voice now. "You think you should've answered? You think you owe him an explanation when he's the one who?—"
She stopped herself. Took a breath. Smoothed her hands over her knees.
"What did he do, Josie?" she asked, quieter now. "What did he actually do?"
I wanted to deflect. I wanted to say it was nothing, that I was overreacting, that maybe I'd misunderstood what I saw. The words were right there, ready to come out, easy as breathing. I'd been saying them to myself for months.
But I couldn't say them anymore.
"I don't know," I said instead, and my voice broke on it. "I don't know what he did. I don't know if he's—if they're—" I couldn't finish. The word stuck in my throat. "I just know that it's been broken for a long time and I've been pretending it wasn't."
Rosa didn't interrupt. She just waited, still and steady across from me.
"He's never there," I said. The words started coming faster now, like something had cracked open inside me and everything was pouring out.
"Not really. He comes home and he's still at the office in his head.
I can see it in his eyes. He's thinking about the next deal, the next meeting, the next thing that needs fixing.
His phone is always in his hand, always in the room, always between us.
I asked him once—just once, Rosa—to leave it in another room for one dinner.
Just one meal without it sitting on the table between us.
And he looked at me like I'd asked him to cut off his own arm. "
My hand closed around the ring in my pocket. I didn't mean to. It just happened.
"I asked him for a day," I said. "Just one whole day with me.
Not a trip, not a plan, just time. And when he couldn't do that, I made it smaller.
A morning, maybe. An afternoon. Then I asked if he'd just come back to the corner with me.
Walk the streets we grew up on together.
Twenty minutes. See the shop, see Omar's laundromat, see the people who remember us when we were kids.
Twenty minutes, Rosa. That's all I was asking for in the end.
And he still won't do it. He says later.
He says when things calm down. But things never calm down. "
I realized I was crying. Not sobbing, just tears running down my face while I talked, and I didn't bother wiping them away.
"He doesn't ask me what I want," I said.
My voice was shaking. "Not about anything that matters.
He decides and then he tells me and I'm supposed to be grateful because he's taking care of it, because he's handling it, because he knows best. And if I try to tell him how I feel, he explains it back to me.
Tells me what I'm really feeling. That I'm tired, or I'm taking something personally, or I'm stressed.
Always calm, always reasonable. And there's nowhere to go from there, Rosa.
What do you say to someone who won't hear you because they've already decided what you mean? "
I stopped. My chest was tight.
"What did you want?" Rosa asked gently.
"I wanted him to ask," I said. "I wanted him to wonder. To care what I thought about things. About where we live, about what we do with our lives, about—about us. But he doesn't ask. He just does."
Rosa reached across the table and took my hand. Hers was warm and steady and rough from years of kitchen work. I held onto it like a lifeline.
"I don't know what I mean to him," I said, and that was the thing that hurt the most. The thing underneath all of it.
"I know what I'm supposed to be. His wife.
The girl from the corner he married when he had nothing.
But I don't know what I actually mean to him, Rosa.
He's never told me. Not in words that aren't just—just things you're supposed to say.
I love you before he leaves for work, not looking at me.
You look nice when we're going out somewhere and he needs me presentable.
But what do I mean? What am I to him besides the thing he's supposed to have? "
I was talking faster now, circling back, trying to find the words for something I'd never said out loud before.
"There was this thing at the mayor's fundraiser," I said.
"Ten days ago. Harlow was there, in front of all the other donors, and she said the corner was a liability.
That's the word she used. Liability. Like the shop, like the neighborhood, like the people who've been there for thirty years—like all of it was dragging me down.
And I answered her. I told her it wasn't a liability, that the shop supports four families, that it's been there for thirty years and it's not going anywhere.
And Vince just stood there with his hand on my back, not saying a word.
Then he looked toward the mayor's table and moved us along.
Like it didn't happen. Like it didn't matter. "
My voice was shaking now, but I couldn't stop.
"And I keep reaching for his hand," I said.
"I don't even realize I'm doing it half the time.
We're walking somewhere or we're sitting together and I just reach for him and he's not there.
Or he is there but his hand isn't available because he's holding his phone or checking his watch or he's in the middle of something and I'm interrupting and I feel like an idiot every time, Rosa.
Every single time. Like I'm a kid tugging on someone's sleeve for attention. "
I stopped. My throat was too tight to keep going. I could feel my pulse hammering in my neck.
I'd never said any of this out loud before. Not to anyone. For nine years I'd kept it inside, told myself it was normal, told myself every marriage had rough patches, told myself he was just busy and I was being needy and it would get better when things calmed down at work.
But things never calmed down at work. And I was starting to think maybe they weren't supposed to.
My hand closed around the iron ring in my pocket. The edges pressed into my palm.
"He made me a ring when he proposed," I said quietly.
"An iron ring, with his own hands, when he had nothing.
He hammered it himself. It was rough and simple and perfect.
And then later, after the money started coming in, he bought me the diamond.
This huge expensive thing. And he thought he was being generous.
Replacing something cheap with something valuable. "
I kept my hand where it was, fingers tight around the iron.
"I kept the first one," I said. "I put it in a drawer when he gave me the diamond because I thought that's what he wanted. But I never got rid of it. And when I left today, I grabbed it. Not the diamond. This one."
Rosa's expression was gentle, sad, and certain all at once.
"Am I being crazy?" I asked. My voice came out small, almost childlike. "Am I making something out of nothing? Maybe she was just—maybe it was just business. Maybe I'm seeing things that aren't there. Maybe?—"
"No," Rosa said firmly. She reached across and took my hand in hers. "You're not crazy, Josie. You're not imagining it. And you're not making something out of nothing."
I wanted to believe her. God, I wanted to believe her so badly.
"You've been asking him for crumbs," Rosa said, and there was anger in her voice now, but not at me.
For me. "For nine years you've been asking him for the smallest, simplest things and he hasn't given them to you.
A walk down the street. His hand. One dinner without his phone.
To be told what you mean to him. To be defended.
To be asked what you want. These aren't big things, Josie.
These are the things that should just be there in a marriage. And he won't do it."
"He's not a bad man," I said automatically. Defending him even now.
"I didn't say he was." Rosa squeezed my hand. "But that doesn't mean he's being a good husband."
The words hit me like a slap. Not because they were cruel, but because they were true. Because I'd been thinking it for months and hadn't let myself say it.
Headlights swept across the living room window.
I knew who it was before the car even stopped. I just knew. My stomach dropped.
The engine cut off. A car door opened and closed. Footsteps on the walkway, quick and purposeful. Vince's walk. I'd know it anywhere.
"I'll tell him to leave," Rosa said, already starting to stand up. "You don't have to see him tonight."
"No." I pulled my hand back. "No, don't."
"Josie—"
"I have to talk to him eventually." I wiped at my face with the back of my hand. I probably looked like a mess, eyes red and swollen. I didn't care. "It might as well be now."
Rosa looked at me for a long moment, searching my face. Then she nodded slowly. She didn't look happy about it, but she sat back down.
The knock came. Three sharp raps, then a pause, then three more. Vince's knock. I'd know it anywhere. The same knock he used when he came home late and thought I might be asleep.
My heart was hammering against my ribs.
I picked up the cold tea and set it back down again. My hands were still shaking.
Then I stood up.