Chapter 10
The house had grown too familiar in its stillness, as if the walls were learning the shape of my silence, memorizing it.
I’d been home for weeks now on medical leave, trying to keep my heart calm, trying to keep myself calm, trying to believe the quiet was actually good for me.
Necessary. Healing. But there were days, like today, when the quiet didn’t feel like rest at all; it felt like a slow unraveling, a soft, lonely ache I couldn’t name.
I sat curled on the couch by the front window, my notebook open across my knees, pen balanced loosely between my fingers.
The page was full of half-finished lines, ideas I was trying to stitch into something coherent, something that would remind me I still had a life outside symptoms and uncertainty.
But my focus wavered, slipping away like water between my hands. I set the pen down, exhaling slowly.
The flutter came a moment later, that quick little misfire in my chest that felt like a hand tapping from the inside.
Not painful, not intense, just familiar enough to make me still.
I pressed my palm lightly against my sternum and breathed, slow inhale, slow exhale, counting evenly, keeping my shoulders relaxed.
The episodes had been manageable lately, the medication helping, the rest helping, though the stress…
. well. Stress didn’t exactly listen to doctors’ notes.
When the sensation settled, I let my hand drop and glanced at the clock on the bookshelf.
Nearly two. I wasn’t waiting for anything in particular, but I kept checking the time anyway, as if some part of me believed it should matter, as if connection was scheduled, measurable, predictable.
I tried not to picture Callum at work, not to wonder whether he’d see the texts I’d sent an hour ago.
They weren’t urgent, just little touches of me sent toward him.
A thought. A joke. A “thinking of you.” A thread, thin but real.
No reply.
Not unusual, I told myself. Not something to analyze. He got busy. Meetings, calls, stress. People drifted into their own worlds. That was normal. It was fine. It definitely wasn’t a pattern now.
I closed the notebook gently and set it aside, then stood and stretched, letting the low afternoon light warm my arms. The house was comfortably lived-in, books on the coffee table from days I’d actually felt well enough to read, a blanket thrown over the back of the couch, a mug sitting on a coaster half-filled with cold tea.
I wandered into the kitchen, filling a glass with cool water, letting the sound break the hush for a moment.
I drank slowly, staring out the window above the sink.
The backyard looked peaceful, soft winter sunlight catching on the fence, the early buds on the trees daring to exist even though spring was far away.
I wondered what it would feel like to sit out there with him again, to talk the way we used to, long, meandering conversations about everything and nothing.
Lately, our conversations had shrunk to small talk and surface-level words.
I craved something deeper, something warmer, something alive.
My phone sat on the counter. I didn’t intend to check it, not really, but my fingers moved anyway, pulling it toward me, lighting the screen. Still nothing.
I set it back down, facedown this time.
The doctor had told me, more than once, that emotional stress could worsen my episodes, that the body didn’t separate kinds of stress, and didn’t care whether it came from fear or anxiety or heartbreak.
A spike was a spike, a trigger a trigger.
I’d nodded politely during those appointments, promising to “be mindful,” promising to rest. I hadn’t mentioned the ache in my marriage.
I didn’t have the vocabulary for it yet.
I moved back to the living room and pulled a soft throw blanket around my shoulders, settling onto the couch.
I let my eyes slip closed for a moment, leaning my head back, breathing evenly.
I wasn’t tired, not in the way that begged sleep.
It was the emotional kind, the kind that made you want to curl up until someone reached for you. Except no one reached.
I opened my eyes again, unable to stay still, and reached for a book. I chose one from the stack, one I’d read twice already but liked enough to revisit, and tried to let the familiar sentences pull me out of my head. They helped, a little. Enough to soften the minutes. Enough to keep me steady.
But time passed differently when you were aware of waiting, even if you didn’t admit you were waiting.
Three o’clock. Then four. The late afternoon shadows stretched across the floor, long and pale, and the ticking of the thermostat switching on made me startle.
I rubbed my face and set the book down, unable to follow the words anymore.
A faint flutter brushed my chest again, not painful, just a reminder. I breathed with it until it faded.
I walked from room to room, almost absentmindedly, as if movement alone might settle the itch under my skin.
I ended up in the doorway of our bedroom, hands resting lightly on the frame as I looked inside.
It used to feel so warm and comforting, and now it just seemed bland and boring, just like everywhere else.
Places that were supposed to hold pieces of a shared life had fallen still.
You just need connection, I told myself. Things will turn around, and whatever is wrong will pass.
Callum loved me. I knew that. Or I used to know that without needing reminders.
I closed the door gently and returned to my seat on the couch, drawing up my knees and resting my chin on them.
Outside, the sky shifted slowly toward evening.
It was here, during these hours, these soft, tired, lonely hours, that the distance hurt most. Not because he wasn’t physically here, but because the version of him who came home lately wasn’t the one who made me feel held.
I tightened the blanket around myself and tried to stay patient. I tried to believe that when he walked through the door later, he’d look at me the way he used to. I tried to believe a lot of things.
My phone buzzed.
I startled, my heart jumping sharply before the disappointment settled.
It was just a calendar reminder.
I lay my forehead against my knees, listening to my own breath fill the room.
Somewhere in the quiet, I hoped, Callum would think of me too.
Somewhere in the quiet, I hoped he was missing me.
Somewhere in the quiet, I hoped the distance wasn’t permanent.
But the house didn’t offer comfort or denial, it simply held every sound I didn’t make, every word I didn’t speak, every hope I tried not to let break.
And the hours kept passing.
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The door opened softly, too softly, like he hoped he could slip inside without drawing attention. I lifted my head from the blanket curled around me, blinking at the warm lamplight, forcing myself upright even though my body felt heavy.
“Hey,” Callum said as he stepped in. His voice wasn’t unfriendly, just muted, distant in a way I felt more than heard.
“Hi,” I murmured. “Long day?”
He nodded, already pulling off his jacket and draping it over a chair.
“Yeah,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “Just a lot going on.”
He moved straight to the kitchen, grabbing a drink, not looking at me, not asking how my day was. And his phone, always in his hand now, lighting up every few minutes, buzzed again against his pocket, a tiny vibration that somehow echoed through the room.
He glanced down at it, thumb brushing over the screen, then slipped it back into his pocket when he realized I was watching.
“Who was that?” I asked lightly, more out of habit than suspicion.
“Work,” he said quickly. Too quickly. “Just emails. Deadlines.”
He moved to the couch but sat at the opposite end, not beside me, not close enough for our knees to touch like they usually did without thinking.
He stared at his drink for a moment before sinking back into the cushions, closing his eyes as though the act of being present required more energy than he had left.
“How are you feeling?” he asked after a beat. He didn’t look at me when he said it. The words came out automatic, like a line he’d memorized.
“I’m okay,” I said softly. “Tired.”
He hummed a quiet acknowledgment, and the hum was polite, detached, the kind you give when your mind is somewhere else entirely.
Silence settled between us, too thin and too stretched as if we were sitting on opposite sides of a widening gap. I watched him shift, then shift again, then check his phone when he thought I wasn’t looking. The screen lit his face briefly in pale blue before he locked it again, jaw tight.
He had been doing that for days, constantly glancing at his phone, responding instantly sometimes, ignoring messages from me for hours, and then avoiding eye contact when I asked simple questions.
“Callum?” I said finally.
His eyes opened slowly. “Yeah?”
“Are you… okay?” The words felt fragile coming out, as though saying them too loudly might shatter something we were both pretending was fine. “You’ve just seemed… a little different lately.”
His jaw clenched, barely. “I’m fine. You don’t need to worry about anything. I just want you to get healthy, that's my first priority.”
The lie was soft but so clear it brushed against my skin like a cold wind.
I tried again, gentler. “If something’s going on, you can tell me. I just… I feel like you’re somewhere else lately.”
“It’s work,” he said, firm enough to close the subject. “Stress. Normal stuff.”
Normal. Except nothing felt normal. There was a tension in him that never quite eased, the silence between us kept catching on things, and his phone seemed to have become a permanent extension of his hand.
“I miss you,” I said quietly, hoping the word landed somewhere that mattered. “It’s only been a few days, but it feels like you’re far away even when you’re right here.”
He exhaled long and slow, leaning forward, elbows on his knees. “Ginny…”
“I’m not trying to pressure you,” I added softly. “I just want us to be okay. I want you to talk to me.”
“We are okay,” he said, too fast, too easily. “Seriously. I’m just tired.”
His phone buzzed again.
He pulled it out of his pocket, thumb hovering, eyes flickering across the screen before he quickly flipped it face-down on the couch. The fact that he didn't open the message in front of me said everything.
My stomach tightened. “Is everything… okay with work?”
“It’s nothing urgent,” he said. But tension rolled off him in waves. “Just noise.”
“Callum,” I said gently, “you’re constantly checking your phone. Something’s clearly—”
“I said it’s nothing.” His voice wasn’t sharp, but it cut anyway. “I’m just overwhelmed. Can we not -&rdquo He stopped himself, raking a hand through his hair. “I don’t have the energy for a heavy conversation tonight.”
I swallowed the ache rising in my throat. “Okay.”
He leaned back again, eyes closing once more, retreating into some internal place I couldn’t reach. And I stayed where I was, wrapped in my blanket, trying not to feel like I was intruding just by being in the same room.
After a long stretch of silence, he said, “I’m sorry. I just… don’t have much left in me right now.”
“I get it,” I whispered. Knowing full well I didn’t. Knowing I wished he’d ask what I had left in me. Knowing I’d spent the day alone with symptoms I didn’t want to worry him with, waiting for him to simply look at me the way he used to.
But he didn’t. He stayed on his end of the couch. Eyes closed.
The distance between us wasn’t wide, technically, maybe three feet of sofa.
But emotionally, it felt like an entire ocean.
I turned toward the window, letting the fading light reflect in the glass, letting the stillness wrap around me like a veil I couldn’t lift.
Only a few days of this distance.
Just days.
And already, the silence between us felt large enough to echo.
Somewhere deep inside, quiet but certain, a thought formed:
If this is what only days feel like, what happens if it becomes weeks? Or longer?
I didn’t want to know.
But I felt the fear of it anyway.
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