9. Rae
RAE
Enid handed me a glass of water I didn't remember asking for.
I took it and set it on the coffee table between us without drinking.
My hands were steadier than they'd been an hour ago, but not by much.
I'd stopped shaking somewhere on the drive out here, white-knuckling the steering wheel the whole forty minutes from Austin, but now that I was sitting still the tremor was coming back.
Her living room was warm. Smaller than the penthouse by half, and filled with furniture that looked like it had been here longer than I'd been alive.
A soft lamp lit the space, the kind with a yellow bulb that made everything feel safer than it probably was.
The couch cushion sagged under me. I curled into the corner of it and pulled my knees up, arms wrapped around my shins like I was trying to hold myself together.
I felt steadier here than I had all day.
That made no sense. I'd left my husband, driven forty minutes with a duffel and my toolbox and a sonogram I couldn't bring myself to look at, and now I was sitting in a house that wasn't mine, talking to a woman I'd mostly talked to through a screen.
Enid and I talked most days — about the weather, about Ruben's latest project, about nothing that mattered — but this was different.
This was real. This was me showing up on her street because I had nowhere else to go.
Except she wasn't a stranger. Not really.
"You don't have to tell me anything," Enid said.
I looked at her. She sat in the armchair across from me, hands folded in her lap, waiting. Not pushing. Not leaning forward with that look people got when they wanted you to spill everything so they could fix it. Just there. Present. Calm.
I hadn't told anyone.
Not Ruben, even though he'd seen enough this afternoon to guess.
He'd asked if I was okay, and I'd said I was fine, which was the biggest lie I'd told all week.
Not Nash, who'd called three times and left two voicemails I couldn't bring myself to listen to.
I'd seen his name light up my phone while I was packing, and I'd just stared at it until it stopped.
I didn't know how to say it out loud. Didn't know if saying it would make it real or make it worse or make it something I couldn't take back.
But I wanted to say it.
God, I wanted to.
"I went to the airline today," I said.
My voice came out steadier than I expected. Flat, almost. Like I was reporting something that had happened to someone else.
"To Austin. I thought—" I stopped. Swallowed. "I don't know what I thought. That I'd see him. That maybe we could talk. That showing up would be better than waiting for him to come home, which he never does on time anyway."
Enid nodded but didn't speak.
"I got to the third floor. The executive offices." My throat tightened. "Nash was there. In the hallway."
The words stuck. I made myself keep going.
"Adriana Moreau was with him."
Enid went completely still.
Her hands, folded so calmly in her lap a second ago, tightened. Her knuckles pressed white against her skin. Her jaw set, a muscle jumping near her ear, and her whole body went rigid — shoulders pulling back, spine straightening, like she'd been hit with something and was bracing against it.
It was a small thing. Barely a shift. But I saw it, clear as day, the way her face changed when I said the name. Not surprise. Recognition. And something sharper underneath it, something that looked a lot like anger.
I didn't ask. I just kept talking, because if I stopped now I'd lose my nerve.
"She straightened his collar," I said. My voice cracked, but I pushed through.
"Right there in the hallway. And then she left her hand there.
On his chest. Her fingers stayed, like she had every right to touch him, and he just — he let her.
He didn't pull away. Didn't step back. He just stood there and let her. "
Enid's mouth thinned into a hard line. She still didn't say anything.
"I didn't say anything to them," I said. "I just left. Took the stairwell. Couldn't get to my car fast enough. I drove back to the penthouse, packed my tools and a few things, and I came here."
The words were coming faster now, like something had broken open and I couldn't stop it if I tried.
"It wasn't the first time I saw her touch him.
" My hands were shaking again, so I pressed them together hard enough to hurt.
"I found a mark on one of his shirts yesterday — Wednesday — on the collar.
Something I couldn't identify. I tried to rub it out but it had already set, and I couldn't account for it.
And she's always there, Enid. Always in his schedule.
Always the one he talks to, the one he prioritizes when I'm asking for five minutes of his time.
I called him Tuesday night and he said he'd call me back, and he didn't, and when I asked him about it Wednesday he said he'd been in a meeting with her. With Adriana."
I stopped. Took a breath. My chest was so tight it felt like I couldn't get enough air.
"I don't know what I'm supposed to do with this."
Enid leaned forward, elbows on her knees. Her face was still tight, still angry, but her voice came out gentle. "What happened today, Rae?"
"I told you. She touched him, and he?—"
"No," Enid said quietly. "I mean, what did you do?"
"I left."
"And before that?"
"I stood in the hallway and watched." The admission burned. "I didn't say anything. I didn't walk up to them. I didn't ask him what the hell he thought he was doing. I just — I watched, and then I left."
"Did you talk to him after?"
"No."
"At all?"
I shook my head. "I didn't know what to say. I still don't."
Enid sat back, watching me. Not with pity. Not with judgment. Just watching, the way you'd watch someone work through a problem they had to solve themselves, and you knew they wouldn't get there if you handed them the answer.
"I took off my wedding ring in the stairwell," I said.
The words came out quieter this time, like they weighed more.
"I got to the landing between floors and I just — I couldn't wear it anymore. I pulled it off and put it in my pocket, and when I got back to the penthouse I left it on the counter. Next to the boxes we never unpacked."
Enid's expression didn't change, but something shifted in her eyes.
"I've never talked about this," I said suddenly.
The realization hit me as I said it, sharp and startling, like I'd stumbled into something I should have seen coming.
"Not like this. Not to anyone."
It was true. I'd mentioned Nash to Ruben over the years — surface things, safe things. That he'd bought the little house back. That the airline was doing well. That we'd been married seven years and the penthouse was fine but I missed Cibolo Heights. Small talk. Nothing that mattered.
But I'd never said what it felt like to be married to him.
Never said that I loved him so much it made my chest ache, or that he'd been gone more than he'd been home for the last two years, or that I'd started to feel like I was married to a schedule instead of a person.
Never said that I was lonely. That I wanted him to see me, to stay long enough to remember I was more than the person who rebuilt the Cessna and held an A&P licence and knew how to live quietly in the margins of his world.
I'd never told anyone that sometimes I woke up in the middle of the night and reached for him, and he wasn't there, and I didn't know if he was in Singapore or Frankfurt or just in the next room working on something that mattered more than I did.
Saying it now — to Enid, in this small warm room forty minutes outside of Austin, in a house on the same street where the little house stood empty — it felt like breaking a seal I didn't know I'd put on myself.
"I still love him," I said.
My voice cracked. I didn't try to hide it.
"That's the worst part. I still love him, and leaving hurts like hell, and I don't know if that makes me an idiot or just someone who can't let go of something that's already gone."
The silence that followed felt enormous. I could hear the hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen. The low creak of the house settling. My own heartbeat, too fast, pounding in my ears.
Enid didn't rush to fill it. She just looked at me with those steady eyes, like she was giving me all the space I needed to fall apart or pull myself together or do whatever I was going to do next.
Finally, she spoke.
"What do you want, Rae?"
The question landed soft, but it hit hard.
I opened my mouth. Closed it. Tried again.
What did I want?
I didn't have an answer. Or maybe I had too many answers, and none of them made sense, and I couldn't untangle them enough to say them out loud.
I wanted Nash. I wanted to leave. I wanted to go back to the penthouse and pretend none of this had happened.
I wanted to stand in that hallway again and say something instead of running.
I wanted him to choose me. I wanted to stop wanting him.
I wanted everything and nothing, and it all hurt.
"I want a marriage," I said slowly.
The words felt fragile, like I was trying to shape something I'd only ever held in the dark, something I'd never let myself look at directly.
"I want him to stop moving long enough to stay.
To be in one place with me, not always halfway to the next flight or the next deal or the next crisis at the airline that only he can solve.
" I swallowed. My throat was tight. "I want us to live in the little house.
The one in Cibolo Heights. On this street.
The one with the yellow second bedroom and the porch that creaks when you step on it, the porch where he proposed seven years ago. "
I could see it so clearly — the two of us in that house, waking up in the same bed every morning, drinking coffee on that porch, living a life that didn't require a forty-minute drive just to feel like I was home.
"I want him to choose me when his work asks for him instead," I said.
"When Adriana calls, or Elias needs something, or there's a deal that can't wait — I want him to say no.
Just once. I want him to look at me and see the person who does the work, not just the person who used to build planes for him when we were starting out.
I want credit for what I do. I want to be seen. "
I stopped.
My chest was tight, my hands trembling again, and I realized I was rubbing my left hand with my thumb — fingers circling the bare spot where my wedding ring used to sit, tracing the place it had been for seven years.
I dropped my hand into my lap.
"That's what I want," I said quietly. "A marriage that looks like that."
Enid nodded once. Slow. Deliberate.
She didn't tell me it was reasonable or unreasonable. Didn't tell me Nash would never give me that, or that I was asking for too much, or that I should have said something sooner. Didn't tell me what was wrong with me or what was wrong with my marriage or what I should do next.
She just sat there, listening, the way she'd been listening all along.
The silence stretched.
I picked up the water glass and drank. The water was lukewarm, but it helped.
Gave me something to do with my hands. Something to focus on that wasn't the ache in my chest or the way my pulse wouldn't slow down or the fact that I'd just said out loud, for the first time in seven years, what I actually wanted from the man I married.
I set the glass back down.
And then I heard it.
The low rumble of an engine outside, slowing as it turned onto the street. Stopping.
A car door.
Footsteps on the walkway.
My heart kicked hard against my ribs, a sharp painful jolt that made my breath catch.
"Rae," Enid said.
Her voice was calm. Steady. Like she'd been expecting this.
"Do you want me to answer the door?"
I stared at the water glass. At the coffee table. At my hands, still trembling in my lap.
My pulse was racing. My throat tight. I couldn't tell if what I felt was panic or relief or some horrible tangled mix of both, and I couldn't make myself look at the door.
The footsteps reached the porch.
He was here.