Chapter 4
Andi
MONDAY MORNING, ALEX can’t find his left shoe.
Hope is in the bathroom with the door locked and the hair dryer running.
Sadie is standing at the back door whining to go out.
The coffee is brewing. The lunches are half-packed on the counter.
Elliot left for the hospital twenty minutes ago.
He kissed my cheek on his way out, which I registered about as deeply as the coffeemaker finishing.
“Mom, where’s my shoe?”
“Check under the couch.”
He checks. It’s under the couch. It’s always under the couch.
I tie it for him, hand him his backpack, and call upstairs to Hope that we leave in four minutes.
The hair dryer shuts off. The bathroom door opens.
She comes downstairs with her hair perfectly straight, which means she woke up thirty minutes early to do it, which means she cares about her appearance in a way she didn’t three months ago. I’ll ask about it at the right time.
I let Sadie out, pour the coffee into my travel mug, check that Alex has his lunch and his homework folder, and herd everyone to the car once Sadie is finished. Alex holds his backpack, staring out the window. Hope sits in the passenger seat with her phone already in her hand.
Drop-off runs on schedule. Alex is at Crestwood by 7:10. He runs toward Diego without looking back. Hope is at Westover by 7:25. She’s been quieter than usual for the past week, and I haven’t pushed it because twelve-year-olds cycle through moods. You wait. You watch. You intervene if it stalls.
“Everything okay?” I ask at the curb.
“Yeah.”
“Maya stuff?”
She shakes her head. “It’s fine, Mom.” She grabs her bag and gets out.
I let it go. If it’s Maya, she’ll bring it to me when she’s ready.
If it’s something else, she’ll bring it when she’s ready.
The one thing I’ve learned about parenting a kid on the edge of thirteen is that asking twice makes them stop answering.
I sign the Greenfield contracts on my phone in the parking lot and send them back to Robin before I’ve pulled onto the main road.
AT THE OFFICE, THE Greenfield onboarding is in motion.
Tessa has intake calls starting tomorrow.
I spend the morning on the Whitaker restaurant consultation, a call with the owner, Gretchen, who’s sixty-three and suspicious of growth.
She thinks franchising will kill her restaurants.
She’s probably right, but she also knows the business can’t stay static.
“I don’t want to be Applebee’s,” she says.
“You won’t be.”
“You sure about that?”
“Mrs. Whitaker, if you become Applebee’s, I’ve failed.”
She laughs. We schedule a site visit for Thursday. I add it to my calendar, seeing the department dinner again, text Jill about Hope’s afterschool, and text Diego’s mom about Alex. Both respond within ten minutes. The coverage is handled.
The work fills the morning. Emails, client calls, Robin’s social media drafts. Tessa brings a question about the Greenfield timeline, and we adjust two deliverables. Lunch is at my desk, leftover pasta, eaten cold.
At 2:30, I close my laptop and drive to pickups.
ALEX TALKS ABOUT DIEGO’S birthday party the entire drive home. He wants laser tag. He wants it confirmed immediately. I tell him I’ll check the calendar. He tells me again that it’s laser tag, in case the first mention didn’t convey the gravity.
Hope gets in at Westover with her earbuds already in. She nods when I ask about homework. She shakes her head when I ask if she needs help.
At home, I let Sadie out and help Alex with his book report. The book is about a kid who survives alone in the woods. Alex can summarize the plot but can’t identify what the character learned, so I ask questions until he gets there himself.
“What did Brian do when the moose charged him?”
“He got hurt. Real bad.”
“So what did he learn?”
Alex chews his pencil. “That he can’t control everything?”
“Good. Write that.”
He writes three paragraphs in his own handwriting, reads them back, and looks up.
“That’s good,” I say. “Really good.”
“Can I have screen time now?”
“Thirty minutes.”
He disappears. I stack his books by his backpack and slide his papers into the folder in his backpack.
Hope is in her room working on her coral reef project. I stop in the doorway. “How’s it coming?”
“Good. I need the poster board Wednesday.”
“It’s on the dining room table.”
She nods without looking up. I stand there wanting to ask about the quiet, wanting to sit on her bed as I did when she was eight and would tell me everything in one breathless paragraph. She’s past that. I respect it but I miss it.
“Mom?” She turns from her screen. “Can I show you something?”
I step into her room. She’s pulled up a photo of a bleached coral reef next to a healthy one. The bleached version is white and brittle. The healthy one is dense with color.
“I want to use this for the before and after,” she says. “Is it too depressing?”
“It’s honest. Use it.”
“Mrs. Patel says we should end on a hopeful note.”
“You can show what people are doing to help. That’s honest and hopeful.”
She considers this, then nods. “Can you help me find images Wednesday?”
“I’ll be here.”
She turns back to her laptop, and I leave her room feeling the warmth of a child asking for help without being prompted, a warmth I know is temporary, available in windows, and more valuable for its scarcity.
I go downstairs and start dinner. Chicken, rice, and broccoli.
The Monday meal. The prep takes forty minutes, which is the gap between homework help and the moment a child announces hunger with the urgency of a crisis.
I set the table while the rice cooks. Four places out of habit.
Elliot’s plate across from mine, where it’s been for fourteen years.
I put the silverware down, adjust Alex’s glass so it’s farther from the edge, and stand in the kitchen I’ve fed two children in for more than a decade while a man who promised to share this life with me sends two-word texts about dinner he won’t eat here.
I catch myself. That’s unfair. He’s at work. He’s a surgeon. Post-op checks are real.
The unfairness doesn’t disappear because I’ve named it. It just waits.
ELLIOT TEXTS AT 6:10. Running late. Post-op check took longer than expected. Eat without me.
The fourth plate goes back in the cabinet.
We eat. Alex talks about laser tag for ten minutes.
He wants to know the venue, the number of players, and whether they provide the vests.
I answer what I can and promise to email Diego’s mom.
Hope eats without talking but stays at the table, which is its own form of participation.
She clears her plate and rinses it without being asked.
I acknowledge this by not making a big deal of it.
“Mom, can you ask Dad if he’ll come to my game Saturday?”
“I’ll ask him tonight.”
“He missed the last one.”
“I know. I’ll ask.”
Alex nods and carries his plate to the sink. He’s asked about Saturday three times in two days. He doesn’t ask with complaint. He asks with the persistence of a kid who still believes repetition changes outcomes.
I clear the table, load the dishwasher, and start Alex’s bath.
He splashes water onto the bathmat and sings something tuneless.
I sit on the closed toilet lid while he dries off, because he still wants company even though he insists he doesn’t need help anymore.
The transition from needing me to wanting me is happening in real time, and I’m paying attention because I missed the moment it ended with Hope.
“Mom?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you think Dad is busy or does he just forget?”
I look at my nine-year-old standing in a towel with his hair dripping on the floor and choose my words carefully.
“Dad’s job is really important and takes a lot of his time. He doesn’t forget about you.”
“Okay.” He pulls the towel closer. “Can I have screen time?”
“It’s bedtime.”
I read him two chapters of his mystery book. He falls asleep with his hand on Sadie’s ear. Hope says goodnight through her closed door. I say it back.
I check the back door, move laundry to the dryer, and refill Sadie’s water bowl. I wipe the counter where Alex spilled rice and set the coffee maker for tomorrow.
At nine, the house is quiet. I sit on the couch with Tessa’s Greenfield copy on my laptop and make edits.
The copy is good. Tessa needs only light direction at this point, and the relief of having an employee I trust is real.
I hired her because she reminded me of myself at twenty-eight, hungry, capable, and unwilling to wait for permission.
She’s earned the trust, and I don’t give it easily.
I close the laptop and pick up my phone.
The text thread with Elliot fills the screen.
His last message: Eat without me. My response: a thumbs-up emoji.
Below that, days of exchanges that read like task assignments.
Alex needs new cleats. Hope’s dentist is Tuesday at 4.
Dog food ordered so don’t bother going by the store. Conference call moved to 3.
I scroll back farther through months of messages.
Every one is a task, a schedule update, or a single-word confirmation.
There’s a photo of Alex at soccer from three weeks ago that I sent without commentary.
He replied with a heart emoji nine hours later.
There’s a text from me about Hope’s school concert next month.
He responded with What date? I told him. He didn’t respond to that.
I keep scrolling. I don’t know what I’m looking for.
A break in the pattern, maybe. A message that contains an opinion, or a joke, or a question that wasn’t about scheduling.
I scroll back three months and don’t find one.
The thread reads like a shared project management board, two people coordinating a house and two children with the efficiency of coworkers who’ve never met in person.
I lock the phone and set it on the coffee table.
Elliot walks in at 9:45. The garage door opens. He moves through the house with the heavy, distracted pace of a man who’s been on his feet since dawn.
“Hey,” he says from the kitchen doorway.
“Hey.”
“Kids down?”
“Both asleep. Alex asked if you’re coming to his game Saturday.”
He pauses. “I’ll try.”
“He said you missed the last one.”
“I know.” He opens the refrigerator and pulls out the plate I saved him. Chicken, rice, and broccoli, covered in plastic wrap. I’ve saved him a plate every time he’s missed dinner for fourteen years. He peels back the wrap and puts the plate in the microwave.
While it heats, he leans against the counter and looks at me. “I’m sorry about the game.”
“You don’t need to apologize to me. You need to be there.”
“I will.”
He might. He might not. The microwave hums. He pulls the plate out, picks up a fork, and eats while standing at the counter.
His scrubs smell like hospital soap. Or not exactly hospital soap.
There’s something under it, different, unfamiliar, and faint.
I’ve been married to this man for fourteen years.
I know what St. James soap smells like. This isn’t quite it.
I let the thought pass. It doesn’t deserve more space than that. People use different bathrooms. Hospitals have different floors with different dispensers. I’m constructing a theory out of soap, and the theory says more about my loneliness than his behavior.
“How was the case?” I ask.
“Long. Complicated post-op.” He chews. Swallows. “How was your day?”
“Good. Whitaker wants a site visit Thursday.”
“That’s great.” He picks up his water glass. “New client?”
“Restaurant group. Four locations. They want to expand.”
He nods. Two questions about my work. Two more than last week.
Two more than the week before. I register this, and I’m angry at myself for noticing it, because the bar is so low that “he asked a follow-up question” qualifies as a notable event in this marriage.
I should be glad he’s paying attention. I should take the questions as a sign.
I’m not glad. The questions feel late. They feel deposited into an account that’s been overdrawn for years, and I can’t tell if he’s making an effort or if he just happened to have a few words left over from a long day and spent them on me by accident.
He finishes eating, rinses the plate, and puts it in the rack.
He touches the back of my head as he passes the couch on his way to the stairs, brief and warm.
It’s not quite a gesture and not quite nothing.
I don’t move. I let the touch land and leave, and the fact that I’m analyzing a hand on my hair for emotional content tells me more about this marriage than the touch itself does.
The shower runs. The pipes rattle in the wall.
By the time he gets into bed, I’ve already turned off my lamp. He settles on his side. The space between us is fourteen inches.
“Alex asked if you’re coming to his game Saturday,” I say again.
“You mentioned that.” He sounds tired.
“He’s asked three times.”
“I said I’ll be there.” He’s impatient now. “Night.”
“Night.”
His breathing slows within minutes. I lie there. Sadie is in Alex’s room tonight, and her spot feels empty. The streetlight crosses the ceiling in a thin stripe.
His phone is on the nightstand. Facedown.
I look at it for a long time. His phone, facedown, three feet from my head, every night for the past two weeks.
I could pick it up. I could look. I could find out whether there’s a reason for the different soap and the late nights and the two questions about my work that felt three years overdue.
I don’t pick it up. I don’t want to be the wife who checks her husband’s phone, and I don’t want to find what I’d find or not find, because either answer requires me to do something about it. Right now, the only thing I have energy for is maybe some sleep before the morning.