Chapter 3
Margot
The name poisons the oxygen.
Tabitha.
Three syllables that act like a controlled demolition, vibrating through the headboard and into my skull.
My heart, which had been slowing near Ross’s chest, suddenly kicks, dead.
I don’t move. Don’t even blink. I am a statue carved from ice, frozen in the exact position of a woman who was loved ten seconds ago.
Ross is the one who moves.
I feel the violent jolt of his body as his brain catches up to his mouth. The arm draped over me, the one that had felt like a sanctuary, suddenly feels like a heavy, dead limb. He pulls back, his skin sticking to mine for a sickening second before the friction breaks.
I stare at the ceiling.
“M-Margot,” he stammers. The tone is different now. It’s not the prayerful whisper of the man who just claimed to be home. It’s the frantic, high-pitched whine of a man who just saw a load-bearing wall crack in half. “I, I didn’t mean. God, Margot.”
If I look at him, I might shatter, and I refuse to give him the satisfaction. I slide away from him, my movements smooth and mechanical. I grab the top edge of the Egyptian-cotton sheet and roll, wrapping it around my body until I am a mummy, a cocoon, a closed system.
The fabric is cold. The room is cold. Ross is a heat source I no longer recognize.
“Margot, please. Look at me.” He’s sitting up now, the mattress dipping under his weight. There’s desperation in his breathing, ragged, uneven, messy. He was always so proud of his control.
Destroyed.I keep the sheet pinned to my chest with white-knuckled hands, staring at the framed architectural sketch of the first bridge he ever designed.
I wonder if the steel in that bridge is as brittle as his loyalty.
“Get out,” I say.The words are small, quiet, but in the vacuum of the room, they land like a gavel. I mean every syllable.
“Wait, let me explain,” he says, words tumbling over each other.
He reaches out a hand, then pulls it back as if I’m made of electricity.
“It’s just... the Dubai project. We’ve been at the office fourteen hours a day, every day, for three weeks.
Her name is on every memo, every draft, every email.
It’s muscle memory, Margot. That’s all. Just a glitch.
I’m exhausted, barely conscious, and my brain, it just defaulted to the name I’ve heard a thousand times today. A million over the past few weeks.”
I finally turn my head. I glance at him, and for a moment, the architectural brilliance he’s so famous for looks like nothing more than a cheap facade. His hair is still a mess from my fingers. His eyes are wide, bloodshot, searching mine for a loophole, a grace period, a revision.
Did she run her fingers through his hair too? See his bloodshot eyes after he came?
“Muscle memory,” I repeat. “Even if that’s true, you think that makes it better?”
“I’m telling you the truth,” he insists, his voice cracking. “It didn’t mean anything. It was a slip of the tongue because I’m burnt out. You know how hard I’ve been working. You know what Arthur expects. Tabitha is just the person standing next to me at the drafting table.”
“You were inside me five minutes ago,” I say, and the sheer, graphic reality of the sentence makes him flinch. “Five minutes ago, you were telling me I was the only thing that mattered. And now you’re already thinking about her.”
“I wasn’t!”
“Then why was her name in your mouth, Ross?” A single tear tracks down my cheek, hot and insulting. Not bothering to wipe it away, I let it go. “There is no explanation that fixes this. You didn’t just miss Valentine’s dinner tonight. You missed the entire point of us.”
Slumping, the salt-and-pepper hair, the broad shoulders, the confident jaw—it all seems to deflate, leaving behind a man who is as tired and small as he claims to be.
“I love you,” he whispers. It’s a pathetic sound. A hollow structure.
I don’t believe it anymore.
“You love the idea of me,” I tell him. “You love having a home to come back to when the office is dark. But you’ve spent so long looking at skyscrapers that you forgot how to look at me. And apparently, you found someone else to look at.”
“Nothing happened with her. I swear to you, Margot. It’s strictly professional.”
“It’s never strictly professional when you bring her into our bed.” Lightheaded, the room tilts on an axis. “Get out. Go to the couch. Go to the office. But you aren’t staying in this room.”
He looks like he wants to argue. But he sees my eyes, the total, catastrophic defeat written in the set of my shoulders.
He stands slowly, his nakedness suddenly vulnerable and ridiculous. Then he reaches for his discarded trousers on the floor, hopping on one foot as he pulls them on. The architect of the century, reduced to a man stumbling in the dark.
“I’ll sleep on the couch,” he says, his voice thick.
Before he leaves, he pauses at the doorway, his silhouette framed by the hallway light. He glances back one last time.
“Margot, I’m so sorry.”
“Go away. I don’t want to hear it anymore.”
He disappears. The click of the door closing.
I sit back down on the edge of the bed. The mattress is still warm from him. The scent of him, the cedar, the espresso, the garlic, and the sex, is everywhere. It’s a sensory assault. I sit perfectly still, my knuckles white as they grip the sheet, listening.
He’s out there. I can hear the low, heavy groan of the sofa in the living room. The deep breath of his existence.
I don’t cry. Not yet.
I reach for my phone on the nightstand. It’s sitting right next to the spot where Ross’s phone lived for that brief, lying hour of darkness.
My fingers are steady, which surprises me.
I swipe the screen, the blue light blinding in the dim room, and find the one name that doesn’t feel like a betrayal.
Wren. My best friend.
It’s past midnight. The rest of the world is asleep, tucked into their own version of safety. The phone rings once. Twice.
“Margot?” Wren’s voice is thick with the fog of sleep, but the sharp edges are already forming. She knows my midnight-call frequency, it’s zero. “What is it? Is it Ross?”
I try to find the words, but they’re trapped behind a dam of pride that’s finally starting to leak. My throat feels like it’s been lined with sandpaper.
“He said her name,” I manage. The words are tiny, fragile things. “In bed, Wren. He said her name.”
The silence on the other end lasts exactly one second. I can practically hear Wren sitting up, the covers rustling as she shifts into combat mode.
“Tabitha?” she asks, knowing exactly who I mean. We’ve dissected Tabthia’s lingering touches over wine for the last month.
“Yes.”
The confirmation tastes like chalk in my mouth.
I close my eyes, and the image I’ve been trying to suppress for weeks flares up behind my eyelids: the company holiday party last month, Tabitha standing too close to him near the bar, her hand lingering on the sleeve of his jacket as if she were checking the fabric for lint.
When I walked up to them, she didn’t pull away. She just smiled—a territorial little glint, and said, “Ross is brilliant tonight, isn’t he?” She gazed at him like he was the sun, and she looked at me like I was a cloud blocking her light.
I knew it then. I knew she wanted to be the one standing next to him.
And now, in the dark, he proved she was.
“Stay here,” Wren says. There’s no pity in her tone, only a fierce, protective pragmatism.
“I’m serious. Pack a bag. Don’t think, don’t analyze the spatial logic of his excuses, and for the love of God, do not listen to him if he tries to talk to you.
Just pack your essentials and get in the car. My guest room is ready.”
“I don’t know if I can move.”
“You can, because you’ve been carrying that man’s career and ego on your back for five years. A suitcase is lighter. I’ll leave the door unlocked. Just come.”
The call ends.
I sit there for a heartbeat, the phone glowing in my hand. Then, I stand. The sheet drops to the floor, a white circle of surrendered territory.
I move to the closet. It’s a walk-in, a masterpiece of organization Ross designed for me last spring. The lighting is recessed and soft. The shelves are perfectly spaced. It’s a beautiful cage.
Pulling my leather overnight bag from the top shelf, I think of our weekend trips to the coast, about the getaways we used to plan and then cancel because of “scheduling conflicts.” I set it on the bench and start pulling hangers.
Jeans. Three sweaters. My silk robe, no, not the robe. Never the robe again. I leave the silk where it is. I grab my oldest, heaviest flannel shirt.
I need layers. Protection.
From the living room, the floorboards groan.
Ross is pacing. I can picture him perfectly, his hands running through his hair, his brow furrowed as he tries to make this go away.
He’s probably rehearsing a new set of apologies, trying to find a way to pivot the narrative so that he’s the victim of his own ambition.
I zip the first compartment of the bag. The sound is like teeth clicking together.
Next, I move to the vanity. My pearls are sitting there, glowing like tiny, mocking moons. I leave them. Same with the expensive perfumes. I grab my toothbrush, my face wash, and a bottle of aspirin.
A tear escapes, landing on the leather of the bag. As I wipe it away with the back of my hand, another one follows. I’m not sobbing, but more… leaking.
His footsteps approach the bedroom door. They stop. I can sense him standing on the other side of the wood, his hand probably hovering over the knob.
“Margot?” His voice is muffled, tentative. “Are you okay in there? I heard you talking.”
Now he cares. Never cared when he was late for dinner every night. Or cared when I voiced wanting to spend more time with him. But now that he’s royally messed up, he cares.
Because I don’t owe him a syllable, I continue folding a pair of wool socks.
“I’m really sorry, Margot. Please. We can talk about this. We can fix it.”
Fix it. He talks about our marriage like it’s a leaky faucet. He thinks you can apply enough sealant to hold it.
I zip the bag shut. Done.
Since I’m horrifically underdressed, I yank on a pair of leggings and a hoodie, all to hide the woman who wore silk and pearls for a man who wasn’t really present. I grab my keys from the nightstand.
All that’s left is to leave the bedroom.
Ross is standing in the hallway. His face is a map of regret, but all I see is the man who brought another woman into the most sacred space we had left.
“Where are you going?” he asks, his eyes falling to the bag in my hand.
“To a place where nobody calls me by someone else’s name.”
I walk past him. And as I do, I don’t brush against him. Don’t even glance backward. Keep moving. Keep going. Through the kitchen, past the cold lamb and the congealed wine, past the lemons in the bowl.
The front door is heavy, solid, yet I easily open it, stepping out into the biting February air.
Across the street, I see a light on in Elias’s kitchen. I wonder if he’s still up, baking the bread that makes his house smell like a home. I wonder if he’s looking out the window, watching the architect’s wife walk away into the dark.
I get into my car and toss the bag onto the passenger seat. My hands are shaking again, but I grip the steering wheel until the pain brings me back. I start the engine, the roar cutting through the neighborhood.
As I pull out of the driveway, I catch a glimpse of Ross opening the front door and staring in the rearview mirror. In the doorway, he’s framed by the warm glow of the house he designed.
He looks like a man who just realized that the most beautiful structure in the world is useless if there’s no one left inside to keep the lights on.
I turn the corner, and he’s gone.