7. Rae
RAE
I packed the way I'd learned everything else in my life, one deliberate motion at a time. My duffel bag sat open on the bed I hadn't slept in the night before. The penthouse felt enormous around me, forty-three floors of glass and money and silence.
I wasn't thinking about where I'd go. That would come later, when I was in the truck and driving and the elevator was too far behind me to turn back.
Right now I just needed my hands busy, needed the rhythm of folding and sorting to keep my mind from catching on the thing I couldn't let it catch on.
The closet still smelled like the cedar sachets I'd bought at the farmer's market years ago, the ones that had followed me from the little house to the hotels to here.
I pulled my old jeans off the shelf, the ones with paint on the cuffs and a rip in the knee I'd never bothered to fix.
They went into the bag. My work shirts, the cotton ones that didn't need ironing.
My boots, scuffed at the toes from kneeling on tarmac.
The flannel I'd stolen from Nash when we were still living in the little house and he'd never asked for it back.
Everything else could stay.
I left the dresses hanging in their garment bags, the heels I'd worn maybe twice, the coat Nash's stylist had picked out that cost more than my first car. None of it felt like mine.
I was reaching for my jacket when my hand knocked against the shoebox I kept on the top shelf, the one I'd shoved back there and tried to forget. It tipped forward. I caught it, and the lid came off in my hands.
The sonogram was right on top.
My throat went tight. I stared at it for longer than I meant to, longer than was smart if I wanted to keep moving.
The image was faint now, the thermal paper starting to fade at the edges the way the technician in Denver had warned me it would.
I should have made a copy. I should have framed it, or put it somewhere safe, or done any of the hundred things normal people did when they wanted to hold on to something.
Instead I'd shoved it in a box and tried not to think about it for two years.
I folded it once, carefully, and slipped it into my back pocket. My hands were steadier than I expected.
I couldn't say why I stood there so long.
I didn't let myself answer that. I went back to packing.
The bathroom counter held seven years of accumulated everything: lotions I never used, perfume Nash had bought me for Christmas, a hair dryer still in its box because I'd never figured out how to use the damn thing.
I left all of it. I took my toothbrush, the ChapStick I actually liked, and the hair ties I'd been buying for myself since I was nineteen.
They fit in the side pocket of the duffel.
I was shoving my phone charger in after them when I saw the shirt.
It was draped over the chair by the window, the charcoal one I'd ironed for Nash the day before.
The one he'd worn Wednesday, when Adriana and Elias came to work at the dining table.
I'd been careful with it, the way I always was with his work shirts, running the iron slow over the collar to get the seam flat.
The shirt had been lying on the chair since.
The collar had a mark on it now.
I picked up the shirt and held it to the light. The mark was small, barely there, a smudge of something I couldn't place. Not grease. Not ink. I rubbed at it with my thumb, but it had already set into the fabric.
I thought about Adriana's hand on that collar, her palm resting against Nash's neck like she had every right to put it there.
I put the shirt back on the chair.
My hands were shaking. I didn't know why, or maybe I did and I just didn't want to say it out loud, not even to myself in an empty apartment where no one could hear me.
My pulse was doing something erratic in my throat.
I pressed my palm flat against my sternum and counted to ten, the way I used to do when I was nineteen and Ruben was teaching me to work on engines and I'd get so nervous my hands would shake too hard to hold a wrench.
It didn't help.
I thought about the airline office, about stepping off the lift onto the third floor and walking down the hallway to find Nash and Adriana by the window at the far end, sixty feet away with nothing between us.
I thought about the way she'd leaned in, the way her hand had come up to straighten his collar, the way she'd let it rest there with her fingers against his skin.
I thought about the way Nash had let her, like it didn't mean anything, like I hadn't driven forty minutes just to see him and turned around without a word because I couldn't stand to watch.
I should have walked in. I should have opened that office door and made them both look at me. I should have asked Nash what the hell I'd just seen, should have made him explain it to my face instead of running like a coward down the back stairwell with my wedding ring burning a hole in my pocket.
But I didn't.
I went back to the bed and zipped the duffel halfway shut, then stopped because my chest felt too tight to keep moving.
I sat down on the edge of the mattress and stared at the floor, at the boxes we'd never unpacked, still taped shut and shoved against the wall like we were always planning to leave.
Why didn't I walk in?
I turned it over and over, trying to find the answer.
Maybe I didn't want to know. Maybe I was afraid of what Nash would say, afraid he'd confirm the thing I'd been trying not to see for months now.
Maybe I already knew, and I just couldn't stand to hear him say it.
Maybe I was a coward, and that was all there was to it.
Or maybe it didn't matter anymore. Maybe we'd already lost whatever it was we used to have, and I'd just been too stubborn or too scared to admit it.
I didn't have an answer. I sat there for a long time, waiting for one, but it didn't come.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out and saw Nash's name on the screen. On my way back. Be home in twenty. Want me to pick up dinner?
I stared at the message. My thumb hovered over the keyboard. I could tell him I was leaving. I could tell him I'd been to the airline, that I'd seen him and Adriana, that I was done waiting for him to notice I was drowning in this life he'd built without me.
I locked the screen and put the phone back in my pocket.
Twenty minutes. I needed to be gone in twenty minutes.
I stood up and pulled my phone out again, opening Nash's contact, my thumb hovering over the call button.
I could call him. I could give him that much, at least—a warning, a conversation that might actually get us somewhere instead of ending the way all our conversations ended now, with him apologizing for missing dinner and me saying it was fine when we both knew it wasn't.
And then what?
He'd ask why, and I wouldn't know how to answer.
I'd try to explain about Adriana's hand on his collar, and he'd tell me I was overreacting, that she was just his VP and I was reading too much into it.
He'd tell me to wait, that we could talk about it when he got home, and I'd do what I always did—say okay and let the moment pass and wake up tomorrow in the same place I'd been yesterday.
I put the phone back in my pocket.
I couldn't do it. I couldn't call him and I couldn't wait for him to get home and I couldn't have this conversation, not tonight and maybe not ever.
I just needed to go.
The tools were in the second bedroom, the one we'd talked about turning into an office and then never did.
I'd shoved them in the closet three months ago when we moved from the last apartment to this one, the same boxes I'd packed two years earlier when the expansion started.
The door stuck when I tried to open it, swollen from the humidity the building's climate control couldn't quite regulate. I yanked it hard and it gave.
My socket set was in the back, the big red toolbox Ruben had given me when I passed my A&P exam.
I pulled it out and set it on the floor, then went back for the rest. My torque wrench, still in its case.
The work gloves I'd worn so many times the leather had gone soft.
The trouble light I'd used to inspect every inch of the Cessna's undercarriage, back when Nash and I were rebuilding it together in Ruben's hangar and the airline was still just an idea we talked about late at night.
I packed them in the duffel on top of my clothes, wedging the toolbox in sideways so it wouldn't crush anything. The weight of it made the bag feel real in a way it hadn't before.
This was it. I was actually leaving.
I went through the apartment one more time, not looking for anything in particular, just checking.
The kitchen I'd barely cooked in, all granite countertops and stainless steel appliances I didn't know how to use.
The living room with the furniture Nash's decorator had picked out.
The second bedroom with the closet door still open and the stacked boxes I could just see through the crack.
I shut the closet door.
I didn't take anything else. What I could carry fit in one bag. Everything else—the clothes in the closet, the untouched lotions, the furniture, the view, the life Nash had built for us forty-three floors above the city—belonged to the money, and the money had never been mine.
I was pulling the duffel onto my shoulder when I remembered the ring.
I dug it out of my jeans pocket, the small gold band with the diamond Nash had saved for three months to buy. He'd proposed at the little house, on the porch that creaked, and I'd said yes before he'd even finished asking.
Now it just felt heavy.
I walked back to the kitchen and set it on the counter, next to the boxes we'd never unpacked, where he'd see it when he came in. He'd know what it meant. He'd know I'd been here, and that I'd made a choice, and that I hadn't waited for him to come home and talk me out of it.
My phone buzzed again. I pulled it out and saw Enid's name this time. You okay, honey?
I typed back, I'm fine, then deleted it. I typed, I will be, and deleted that too.
Before I could put the phone away, it rang. Enid.
I almost didn't answer. My thumb hovered over the red button, and I thought about letting it go to voicemail, about getting in my truck and driving away without talking to anyone.
But Enid had been there this afternoon when I couldn't breathe, when she'd driven out to Ruben's shop and found me there with my hands shaking. She'd made me sit down. She'd told me to go to the airline and see Nash, and I'd listened.
I answered. "Hey."
"Rae." Her voice was careful, like she was trying not to spook me. "Where are you?"
"Home."
"You talk to Nash?"
"No."
There was a pause. I could hear her breathing on the other end of the line, could picture her standing in her kitchen with the phone pressed to her ear and that look on her face, the one that said she knew I was lying or at least not telling her the whole truth.
"Rae," she said again. "What happened at the airline?"
I couldn't get the words out. I looked at the ring sitting on the counter, at the duffel bag by my feet, at the boxes we'd never unpacked. "I can't do this right now, Enid."
"Can't do what?"
"This. Talk about it. I just—I need to go."
"Go where?"
I didn't answer.
"Rae." Her voice sharpened. "Don't do anything stupid. Whatever you saw, whatever happened, you need to talk to Nash first. You need to give him a chance to?—"
"I have to go," I said. "I'm sorry."
I hung up before she could say anything else. My hand was shaking so hard I nearly dropped the phone. I put it on silent and shoved it back in my pocket, then stood there with my eyes closed, trying to get my breathing under control.
Don't do anything stupid.
Too late.
I picked up the duffel and walked to the door.
My keys were in my hand, the truck key and the key to the penthouse and the key to Ruben's shop that I'd never given back.
The hallway outside was quiet, just the low hum of the building's ventilation and the distant sound of an elevator arriving on another floor.
I thought about Nash finding the ring. I thought about him calling me, and whether I'd answer, and what I'd say if I did.
I thought about the little house in Cibolo Heights, the one with the porch that creaked and the second bedroom painted yellow, and whether it was still empty or if he'd sold it again without telling me.
I thought about whether it was too late for us, whether love could survive this much silence and distance and all the things we'd stopped saying to each other somewhere between the hotel in Denver and the forty-third floor.
Whether Nash would fight for me, or whether he'd let me go the way he'd let Adriana touch his collar, like it didn't mean anything, like I'd never been there at all.
I didn't know. I didn't let myself know.
I opened the door and left.