Chapter 21
Callum
After the visit from my father the day before, I didn’t get any extra clarity, no sudden sense of direction, no clean slate. Just continued guilt.
I tried my best to stay busy, finding anything around the house, while working on some meaningless things for work.
While I am sure they didn’t appreciate my reduced hours, I couldn’t focus on it.
I was lucky that my boss was so kind and that I had been able to save up enough money to temporarily reduce my hours.
My phone buzzed somewhere in the living room, but I ignored it. With Ginny recovering with my parents, it was almost always spam now. I didn’t want to admit the tiny, pathetic part of me that checked notifications with a flicker of hope before reality caught up.
The buzzing came again, then again, then a fourth time.
I wiped my hands on a towel and walked toward the sound.
The phone sat on the coffee table, lighting up with an unfamiliar number that sent message after message in short bursts.
The first thing that came to mind was a bot, some auto-text thing about insurance or investment scams, but something about the timing made me hesitate.
I picked it up.
Unknown number: hey stranger :)
I stared at the screen, waiting for some obvious scam trigger, some mention of crypto, or a link to click, but the typing bubble appeared again.
you really blocked me?
after everything I told you?
My stomach dropped.
Not a bot and not a scam - I wish.
Ashley.
I exhaled hard and rolled my shoulders back, trying to ease a tension that had been building since the moment I saw her name on my phone weeks ago.
She must have gotten a new number after I blocked the last one.
I should have expected this. She was good at slipping past any boundary that wasn’t made of concrete.
More messages blinked onto the screen.
I had to get a new number because he found me again
the man I told you about
the one who keeps following me
remember?
and you’re just… gone?
The arrogance in that line hit like a spark against dry wood, small, but capable of catching fast. I kept reading anyway, because ignoring her now felt like letting a mosquito buzz around my ear instead of swatting it.
you said you wouldn’t disappear on me
I thought you cared about what I was going through
but I guess you only care when it’s convenient for you
My jaw tightened. The audacity of her guilt-tripping was almost unbelievable, twisting a handful of half-conversations into some narrative where I owed her something.
The entitlement in her tone made my skin crawl, like she genuinely thought she had any claim on my attention beyond shutting this down.
Before I could even consider responding, another message popped up.
did your wife enjoy her little tantrum? I heard what happened from a friend - it sounds like she is faking it
is she STILL acting like she’s dying over nothing?
you know stress makes people dramatic
that’s literally what you told me that night
so why are you pretending she’s fragile now?
A cold, sharp clarity snapped through me, steadier than anger and quieter than rage, and it hit all at once how far over the line she had stepped.
My jaw locked so tightly it ached, because she wasn’t just twisting my words now, she was dragging Ginny into it, spitting out cruelty about the woman who had collapsed, reducing a genuine medical emergency to a “tantrum.” The heat in my chest rose fast and hard, protective and furious, and every part of me recoiled at the venom she’d aimed at Ginny, as if Ashley had any right to speak her name at all.
I hit block without writing a single word.
The phone gave a soft vibration as the action completed, and the screen returned to silence, clean, empty, uncomplicated silence.
I set the device face-down on the table and let out a breath that felt heavier than I expected, because I knew that wouldn’t be her last attempt.
She never stopped at the first barricade.
But the difference now was simple and absolute: I wasn’t interested. I wasn’t tempted. I wasn’t confused.
I was done.
The house was quiet again, sunlight warming the hardwood and drifting across the floor in slow, shifting lines, and I stood there for a moment, letting the stillness settle.
The blocked number, the messages, the implication that she knew anything about my marriage, they all tried to push at a bruise I wasn’t going to let her touch again.
Ginny was healing miles away, surrounded by people who liked her, trusted her, cared for her in ways I should have shown sooner. And I was here, in the wreckage I had created, trying to rebuild something that might never be returned to me.
But that work was mine. And it was honest.
And it had nothing to do with Ashley.
I slid the phone back onto the table and stepped away, unwilling to spend another moment thinking about Ashley. I returned to the half-finished project in the spare bedroom, picking up the sanding block and moving with the same slow, steady focus I’d had all morning.
The house felt better than it had two days ago, not whole, and not warm, but less abandoned. Like it understood I was trying. Like it was willing to let me.
As I worked, my thoughts drifted, not toward guilt the way they had before, but towards Ginny.
I wondered what Ginny was doing - if she was resting, or drinking tea, or laughing with Thalia.
I wondered whether she’d eaten breakfast or walked outside for some fresh air or curled up under the blanket she liked to keep wrapped around her shoulders.
I wanted to call her, to go see her, but it didn’t feel like my place anymore. I couldn’t keep disturbing her peace while she was healing.
My job, in this house and in this moment, was to keep working and to keep learning how to build a life she might want to return to, not through grand gestures, not through pleas, not through chasing her with apologies, but through the quiet, steady consistency I should have given her all along.
And while I sanded the wall smooth, letting the fine dust fall across my hands, I felt a strange steadiness settle into my bones. I couldn’t fix everything. I couldn’t undo what had already happened. But I could keep going.
The house would be ready when she was ready.
· · ─ ·?· ─ · ·
Ginny
Thalia had left a few hours earlier, promising she would come by tomorrow with another stack of books and a bag of those little fruit gummies she kept insisting were “medicinal.” I didn’t argue.
It was easier to let her mother-hen me than to sit alone with my thoughts, and the quiet of the guest room had started pressing too close against my ribs.
So when his parents invited me to the kitchen table for dominoes, I said yes.
Not because I suddenly felt social, not because I was magically healed, and not because I thought keeping busy would fix anything, but because the alternative was lying on the bed and staring at the ceiling and hearing every echo of the fight reverberate in my skull.
The late afternoon light slanted through the sliding glass door, warm and soft and almost tender, and the house still smelled faintly of basil from the soup his mother had made earlier.
The table was covered in scattered domino tiles, and Callum’s father was pretending not to take the game personally while his mother cheerfully crushed him every round.
It helped.
Not a lot, but enough.
I drew another tile, tried to find a place to put it, and felt the slight easing of my shoulders that came whenever I focused on something that wasn’t my marriage collapsing like wet plaster.
“You don’t have to let me win,” Margot teased, nudging my elbow gently, in that way she had that made me feel like she was anchoring me without making a big deal of it.
“I’m not letting you win,” I said. “You’re annihilating us naturally.”
She laughed, delighted, and his father shook his head with exaggerated resignation.
I was just starting to relax again, just starting to breathe without feeling the air scratch my lungs, when my phone buzzed on the table beside me.
Buzz.
Buzz.
Buzz.
Bobby glanced at the phone, then at me, polite enough not to pry but perceptive enough to notice the way I stiffened.
“You can answer if you need to,” he said. “We’ll wait.”
But I already knew, somewhere low and cold in my stomach, that this wasn’t Thalia checking in or work sending a reminder or anything ordinary. Luck hadn’t been on my side lately.
Unknown Number.
My chest pinched tight, as if someone had reached in and squeezed from the inside, because unknown numbers stopped being harmless ever since one of them turned out to be her.
I shouldn’t have opened the messages. I knew better, I knew better the way you know not to touch a hot stove but still do it once out of reflex and regret it instantly.
But I opened them anyway.
hey ginny
i’m reaching out because i think you deserve honesty
i’ve been trying to work through everything with callum, but he’s really overwhelmed right now
he told me things got bad again at home
My throat closed, sharp and sudden.
Another message arrived before I could even process the first few.
he said he didn’t want to upset you by being around too much, he’s scared of your reactions
you’re making him feel trapped and he doesn’t know what to do with that
I stared at the words, my pulse beating hard in my ears, and for a moment everything around me, the clattering of domino tiles, the low murmur of his parents talking, the warm kitchen light, blurred into static.
Then more messages:
you should know he’s been confiding in me for a while
i’m the one he talked to the night he left you to calm down. he needed space and i told him it was okay
you’re too emotional sometimes and he just needs a break. Don’t you see what you’re doing to him?
I felt the air go out of me in a thin, soundless exhale.
Margot paused mid-move, eyebrows lifting as she looked at me more closely.
“Sweetheart? You look pale.”
I tried to answer, but the phone buzzed again, dragging my attention back like a hook.
he said you’ve been more of a burden than a partner lately
I’m not trying to hurt you
I’m just telling you what he told me so you can prepare yourself for whatever happens next
Something inside me wobbled, then cracked, then began collapsing in slow motion.
Because even though I knew Ashley lied, even though I understood she manipulated him and tried to wedge herself between us before, even though every sentence she wrote was shaped exactly like a trap, my brain still whispered the ugliest, weakest question:
What if some part of it was true?
My fingers tightened around the phone until they ached.
More messages flashed onto the screen, crueler than the rest:
also since you’re going to find out anyway, yes… we kissed. he said he didn’t want to hurt you but he didn’t want to lie either
you deserve to hear it from someone who actually cares
The words slammed into me so fast and so hard that the room lurched sideways.
I didn’t gasp. I didn’t make a sound. I just felt everything inside me drop out, like a floor giving way under rotten boards.
Margot stood immediately, her chair scraping back, concern sharp in her eyes.
“Ginny? Honey, what happened?”
I shook my head, but the movement felt disconnected from my body, small and shaky and useless.
My throat burned, and the back of my eyes stung, and suddenly the weight of everything, the fight, the panic attack, the separation, the humiliation of needing his parents’ care, the way his absence hollowed out the house, crashed down all at once.
The first tear didn’t even feel like a tear.
Just heat spilling over.
Then another. And another. And then I was crying too hard to breathe, too hard to swallow, too hard to pretend it was anything but heartbreak clawing its way up through me.
Bobby pushed back from the table, startled, but Margot moved first, rounding the table with quick, sure steps, wrapping an arm around my shoulders before I had the chance to fold in on myself.
“Oh sweetheart,” she breathed, soft and firm and steady. “It’s okay. You’re okay. You’re safe. Just breathe.”
But I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t form the words to explain, because I didn’t even know where to begin.
All I knew was that Ashley’s lies, because they had to be lies, they had to be, had hit every open wound I’d been desperately trying to cover, and now I was bleeding from all of them at once.
Margot kept her arm around me, anchoring me against the storm I couldn’t control, while Bobby quietly stepped away to get a glass of water, moving with the kind of careful gentleness men used when they wanted to help but didn’t know how.
I pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes, trying to stop the shaking in my chest, but it only made my breath hitch harder.
Margot stroked my back, murmuring softly, “Whatever it is, we’ll figure it out. You’re not facing it alone.”
That, more than anything else, made the tears come faster.
Because I didn’t feel like I had a husband anymore. But I wasn’t alone, not here, not when I was surrounded with the people who had loved me long before this mess, and who, unlike him, hadn’t let me down.
I leaned into her, helpless and hurting and exhausted, and let myself cry until everything in me went raw.
And somewhere, through the blur of tears and the pulse of humiliation and fear and doubt, one aching thought kept echoing quietly: Why would Ashley lie like this today, unless she knew the truth was slipping out of her grasp?
Unless Callum had finally shut her out for good?
Unless she was losing whatever illusion she thought she had?
Unless this was her last way to hurt us both?
None of that made her words easier to read, or the pain sharper in my chest any softer, but it did plant one single, flickering ember inside the wreckage: This wasn’t proof of Callum hurting me. This was proof of Ashley flailing.
And even though I was still crying into Margot’s shoulder, barely able to hold myself together, I clung to that thought like a lifeline.
Because lies only came this viciously when every other part of the plan was falling apart.