Chapter 2
Chapter
Two
Marilyn
The Morning After
The next morning, I woke to the faint metallic click of the heater and the shifting creak of the bay house as it adjusted to the changing temperature.
My first thought was that Michael had somehow slipped back in during the night without waking me, that I’d roll over and find him sprawled on his back with his mouth open, snoring in defiance of every expensive snoring solution our marriage had ever purchased.
I reached across the bed, expecting the predictable warmth of his shoulder. My hand met only the smooth, cold expanse of a freshly made sheet, the kind of untouched flatness that signaled he hadn’t come home at all.
I took a deep breath and exhaled.
For a long moment, I just lay there, waiting for the appropriate emotion to present itself.
In our years together, Michael had occasionally missed returning home at the right time, usually when deals dragged past midnight or when some junior analyst needed fathering through a personal or professional meltdown. This was not unusual. Not the absence, and not the fact that he hadn’t texted.
No, what bothered me was the neatness of his pillow, the absence of his toothbrush in the charger, the fact that the house felt even quieter than it had the night before.
The man was supposed to be celebrating his life’s work, and he’d let it eat him alive again.
I gave him a few points for not drunk-dialing me at 2 a.m. from some terrible club, then deducted those points for lack of basic courtesy.
I checked my phone out of habit, expecting a three-word text: ‘All went well.’ Instead, the lock screen showed nothing.
No missed calls, no quick check-in, not even a GIF from Michael’s favorite collection of poorly animated congratulatory memes.
I stared at the phone for a few seconds, trying to remember the last time an entire night had gone by without at least a token message.
I headed downstairs, the echo of my own footsteps a reminder that the house belonged to me now, at least for the morning. The fridge was stocked with the results of my shopping trip, a power smoothie for him, a leftover latte for me.
I take a deep breath and exhale.
I set Michael’s smoothie on the counter, a ridiculous gesture of optimism, and took my coffee to the sunlit window, staring at the bay.
I sat staring out the window.
I debated calling him. The adult in me said to wait; the wife in me wanted to check that he was, in fact, alive. The wife usually won these arguments. But this time, I let him be.
Two hours and three unreturned texts later, I gave up on waiting and sent a message that was both an inquiry and a jab: ‘Did the newly minted billionaire survive the night or should I start auditioning replacements?’
Nothing.
I was slicing an apple for breakfast, the sound of the blade on the cutting board louder than I remembered, when my phone finally rang.
I expected Michael’s number, but my heart still gave a little lurch when I saw it on the screen.
I answered on the second ring, making sure my voice sounded neutral.
“Well, well,” I said. “I was about to alert the media.”
The silence that followed was just long enough to rewrite the morning.
Then, in a voice that sounded unfamiliar—tight, careful, too old—Michael said, “Marilyn.”
Something inside me sat up and paid attention.
I heard every molecule of distance in the way he said my name, and in an instant, every trivial irritation about his absence evaporated.
I set the knife down, braced my hand on the counter, and listened as Michael tried and failed to find the next word.
That’s how I knew. Before he even finished the sentence, before he told me what had happened, I knew this was the morning our marriage stopped being a joke about survival and became something we would have to survive for real.