10. Elena
— ? —
Elena
The USB drive has been in my nightstand drawer for weeks.
I’ve opened the drawer maybe a hundred times, looking for a hair tie, a phone charger, the anxiety medication I never take, and every time, I’ve seen it there. Small and black and ordinary-looking, like it doesn’t contain the power to change everything.
I’ve never touched it. Never even picked it up.
Until now.
I sit on the edge of my bed with Camille’s medical records spread beside me. The math is irrefutable: she can’t be fourteen weeks pregnant. Her Instagram post is a lie. The text she sent me the night I left…the baby is Adrian’s…is a lie.
If she lied about that, what else did she lie about?
I open the drawer.
The drive is lighter than I remember. I turn it over in my palm, examining it from every angle like it might reveal something about its contents. It doesn’t. It’s just a drive. Just data.
I’m not doing this to believe him, I tell myself. I’m doing this to confirm my sister is a liar.
It’s a thin distinction. But it’s the only one I’ve got.
***
My laptop takes forever to boot up.
Or maybe it takes the normal amount of time and I’m just hyperaware of every second, every loading screen, every spinning wheel. By the time the desktop appears, my palms are sweating.
I plug in the drive.
Three video files appear. They’re labeled by camera location: KITCHEN_MAIN, KITCHEN_SIDE, KITCHEN_WINDOW. Timestamps show November 23rd, 3:42 p.m.
The day I left.
I click on KITCHEN_MAIN.
The footage is grainy black-and-white, the kind of security camera quality that makes everything look slightly unreal. I can see the counter, the refrigerator, the window where I stood in the rain watching my marriage collapse.
Adrian enters the frame at 3:41 p.m. He’s checking his phone, of course he is, and moving toward the coffee maker. Camille appears a moment later, coming from the direction of the hallway.
I watch her walk toward him. She’s saying something I can’t hear, the footage has no audio, and her body language is casual, relaxed. Just two people having a conversation.
Then she sets something on the counter. The pregnancy test. I can see the two pink lines even through the grainy footage.
Adrian’s head turns toward it. His body goes still.
And Camille moves.
She’s fast, faster than I expected, closing the distance between them in two steps, her arms going around his neck, her mouth finding his before he has time to react.
I watch his hands come up.
One second.
Maybe two.
His palms are flat against the air, not touching her, frozen in that terrible limbo between push and pull. His whole body is rigid, shocked, like someone just threw ice water in his face.
And then…
He shoves her.
Hard. Harder than I expected. She stumbles backward into the counter, catching herself on the edge, and he’s already stepping away, putting distance between them. His mouth is moving, yelling something, probably, and then he grabs a glass from the dish rack and hurls it into the sink.
I hear the crash in my memory, even though the footage is silent.
He points at the door. She’s crying now, I can tell by the way her shoulders shake, but he doesn’t move toward her. He just keeps pointing, keeps yelling, until finally she turns and walks out of frame.
Adrian stands there for a long moment, hands braced on the counter, head bowed.
Then he looks up.
Toward the window.
Toward where I was standing.
But I was already gone.
***
I watch it three more times.
Different angles, different perspectives, but the same story every time. Camille initiates. Adrian freezes. Adrian shoves her away.
He told the truth.
I close my laptop and sit in the silence of my apartment, trying to figure out what to feel.
Relief? Maybe. Something loosens in my chest, some knot I’ve been carrying for a month without realizing it. He didn’t betray me. Not like that. Not in the way I saw through that rain-streaked window.
But the relief is complicated, tangled up with everything else, the months of being invisible, the phone that was always more important than me, the mother who rearranged my life while he watched in silence.
Being innocent of the kiss doesn’t erase all of that.
Being innocent of the kiss doesn’t make him a good husband.
It just makes him… not a cheater.
Which is something. But it’s not everything.
***
I need to tell him.
My phone is in my hand before I’ve consciously decided to pick it up. His number is still blocked, has been since that night at the motel, and for a moment I just stare at the screen, thumb hovering over the settings.
Unblock.
The word feels heavy. Final. Like once I do this, there’s no going back to the careful distance I’ve been maintaining.
I tap the button.
My phone vibrates.
And vibrates.
And vibrates.
Messages flood the screen, one after another, timestamps spanning the last month. December. November. The night I left.
Day 1: I went into your workspace today. I looked at your portfolio. I’m so sorry I never looked before.
Day 2: I drove past your apartment building. I didn’t stop. I wanted to. But you asked me not to.
Day 3: I had dinner with my mother tonight. She said something cruel about you. I told her if she ever speaks about you that way again, I’ll cut her off entirely. She didn’t believe me. She will.
Day 4: I miss you. I miss the way you hum when you’re working. I miss the sound of your voice. I miss you.
Day 5: Happy Thanksgiving. I’m alone. I turned down three invitations because none of them included you.
Day 16: I saw your work in a design blog today. They called you “one to watch.” I could have told them that four years ago.
Day 27: I love you. I know you don’t want to hear it. I’m saying it anyway.
Twenty-seven messages.
Twenty-seven days of Adrian talking to no one, sending words into a void, waiting for me to hear them.
I scroll through them for twenty minutes, reading fragments, catching glimpses of the man I married, not the absent workaholic who let his mother belittle me, but the one who crossed a rooftop bar to tell me something he didn’t know yet.
Finally, I type a response.
I watched it.
Three dots appear almost immediately.
Can I come over?
I look around my terrible apartment, the leaking ceiling, the wobbly chairs, the cutting board I still haven’t sold, and think about what it means to let him back in. Even just physically. Even just for a conversation.
Yes.
***
He arrives in seventeen minutes.
I know because I count. I sit on my bed and stare at the door and count the seconds, the minutes, the sound of footsteps on the stairs.
The knock is soft. Almost tentative.
I open the door.
Adrian is standing there in jeans and a sweater, no coat despite the December cold. He’s breathing hard, like he ran here, and his hair is disheveled and his eyes are wide and uncertain in a way I’ve never seen before.
“Elena.”
“You made it in seventeen minutes.”
“I was already in my car when you texted back.” He doesn’t move to come in. Waits for permission. “I’ve been driving around your neighborhood for an hour. Just in case.”
“That’s either romantic or creepy.”
“Probably both.” The corner of his mouth twitches. “Can I come in?”
I step aside.
***
He doesn’t sit down.
He stands in the middle of my tiny living room, hands shoved in his pockets, looking around at the space I’ve built without him.
The workbench covered in sketches. The tools hung neatly on a pegboard I installed myself.
The cutting board half-finished, the wood grain glowing under the overhead light.
“You’ve been busy,” he says.
“I’ve been surviving.”
“More than surviving. This is…” He gestures at the workbench. “This is real. This is yours.”
“It was always mine. You just never looked.”
“I know.” He meets my eyes. “I’m looking now.”
I don’t know what to say to that. So I say the thing I came here to say.
“The footage showed what you said it would. Camille initiated. You pushed her away. You told the truth.”
“I know I did.”
“But here’s the thing, Adrian.” I cross my arms over my chest. “Being innocent of that kiss doesn’t erase everything else. It doesn’t erase the months of being invisible. The dinners where you stared at your phone. The times your mother said something cruel and you just… let it happen.”
“I know.”
“You were a terrible husband.”
“I know.”
“So what now?” My voice cracks slightly. “You send me twenty-seven texts and show up at my apartment and, what? I’m supposed to fall into your arms and pretend the last three months didn’t happen?”
“No.” He takes a step toward me. “I’m not asking you to pretend anything. I’m asking you to let me prove I can be different.”
“How?”
“However you want. Whatever terms you set. I’ll meet them.”
I think about Sophie’s words at the bar. There’s a difference between protecting yourself and punishing yourself. I think about the twenty-seven messages, the toolbox he left behind, the phone call to Sarah Miller that he asked her not to mention.
“I keep my apartment,” I say.
“Okay.”
“I keep my business. My clients, my schedule, my work. None of that changes.”
“Of course.”
“I’m not moving back to Vale Manor. I’m not playing happy wife at your mother’s dinner parties. I’m not promising you anything, not reconciliation, not forgiveness, not a future. I’m giving you a chance to prove yourself. That’s it.”
“That’s enough.”
“And if you screw up, if you pick up your phone when I’m talking to you, if you let Vivian say one more cruel thing without defending me, if you give me any reason to doubt…”
“Then I’ll have earned it.” He’s close enough now that I can see the pulse jumping in his throat.
“Elena, I know I don’t deserve this. I know I destroyed something precious through neglect and cowardice and a thousand small failures.
But I’m asking you to let me try to rebuild it.
Not with grand gestures or security footage.
Just with… presence. With showing up. Every day. However long it takes.”
I should say no. I should protect myself, maintain my distance, keep the walls I’ve built so carefully over the past month.
But I’m so tired of walls.
“One chance,” I say. “That’s all you get.”
“One chance is all I need.”
He doesn’t kiss me. Doesn’t reach for me. Just stands there, close enough to touch, letting me decide what happens next.
My phone buzzes.
We both look at it, lying on the kitchen counter. An unknown number, but I recognize it now. The same one that sent the showcase text, the timeline warning, all those little breadcrumbs of doubt.
The message is from Camille.
I know you watched the footage. But there’s more to this story than Adrian’s telling you. Meet me tomorrow. Neutral ground. Just the two of us. I’ll explain everything.
Adrian’s jaw tightens. “You don’t have to respond.”
“I know I don’t have to.” I pick up the phone. “But I want to.”
I type my reply before I can second-guess myself.
Where and when?