Chapter 15
Margot
“Ineed more sweaters.”
That was the excuse I gave Wren. A lie, of course. The truth was simpler—and more selfish: living in a space I hadn’t curated had become exhausting. I missed my lighting. I missed my silence.
Standing on the front step of my marital home, the key turns in the lock with a familiar, heavy click. Oh, how I missed it.
I push the door open. Inside, the air is thick. It preserves the ghost of the dinner I scrapped days ago, the faint, oily memory of lamb. But beneath the stale scent of missed connections, the place smells like me. Citrus and old paper.
I step in and close the door.
As I walk through the living room, I trail my palms along the worn spine of the emerald velvet sofa. I bought it at a flea market the summer before I met Ross. It cost fifty dollars and took two friends to haul it up the stairs of my old walk-up, but I loved it. It was mine before we were us.
Memories are everywhere.
Moving down the hall, my fingers brush the wallpaper. Ross hated it. He called it “busy” and “dated.” But I picked it because the pattern, faded peonies and twisting vines, reminded me of my grandmother’s sewing room. It was a hug in paper form.
When I reach the bedroom doorframe, I stop to trace the small, crescent-shaped gouge in the plaster.
The night it happened, Ross got a massive raise.
He came home flushed with champagne, popping a celebratory bottle in the hallway.
The cork flew wild, slamming into the wall with a crack like a gunshot.
We laughed until we couldn’t breathe. I didn’t know then that the dent would last longer than the happiness.
Sighing, I enter the bedroom to pull a stack of cashmere sweaters from the cedar drawers. They land in my arms, soft and heavy. Packing them should be the next step. Now that I have them, I should turn around, walk out, and go back to Wren’s.
But the window facing Elias’s yard pulls me in.
I hesitate. Ross is there. I shouldn’t look. Shouldn’t care. But how could I not?
Shifting the pile of clothes to one arm, I tilt the blinds just enough to create a slice of view. Hiding isn’t necessary. He can’t see me in the dark.
Ross is on Elias’s back porch. Gone is the charcoal suit, the starched cuffs, the silk tie. In their place is a gray t-shirt, dark with sweat between the shoulder blades. He kneels, warring with a power drill.
I stare. The man who sketched skylines and commanded boardrooms can’t drive a screw into a piece of pine.
The bit slips. I hear the high-pitched whine of the motor even through the glass. Ross flinches; his posture snaps tight.
Then, he cracks.
Ross Calder, a man made of ice and steel, hurls the tool across the porch. It hits a post with a violent thud and skitters across the floorboards.
He sits back on his heels, chest heaving. He looks human. But most of all, he looks like a stranger.
For five years, we outsourced our house maintenance. Repairs all hired out so his hands could stay clean for the firm. If a lightbulb went out, he called a guy. If the lawn grew too high, he wrote a check.
But this? There is no one to hire. There is just the wood, the heat, and his own incompetence.
I watch him crawl across the deck to retrieve the drill. He wipes sweat from his eyes with a filthy hand, leaving a smear of black grease across his forehead. He doesn’t notice.
My fingers knot into the cashmere. Watching him feels illicit, like witnessing a man trying to learn a language he’s never heard.
Hate should be the only emotion here. It would be so easy to lock the door and close the blinds.
But the anger in my chest makes room for something sharper. Something dangerous.
Curiosity.
I want to see the blisters. I want to know if this penance is a performance for an audience of one, or if the man next door is finally doing the work when no one is watching.
Finally, the screw sinks home. He sits back on his heels, breathing hard, looking at the wood as if he’s just conquered a mountain.
Then, he gets up, moves to the top step, and sits back down.
He has something in his hand. I’m squinting, trying to make it out, when my phone vibrates in my pocket, startling me. I pull it out.
It’s him! Ross.
I glance through the blinds. His shoulders are hunched, his face tight with a vulnerability I’ve never seen. Unable to silence him when I’ve witnessed a vulnerable piece of him, I answer and press the phone to my ear, keeping my eyes locked on him through the slats.
“Hello?” I say.
Across the yard, he freezes. He grips the railing of the porch so hard his knuckles must be white.
“Margot,” he says. His voice in my ear is a ghost; the man on the porch is a stranger. “It’s me.”
I watch his lips move. I watch him swallow hard.
“Ross,” I say finally. “I... I can’t do this right now.”
He starts talking fast, desperate. I watch him pace the small square of the porch he just repaired. He looks small. He looks human.
“I need time,” I tell him, my voice steady even as my heart hammers against my ribs. “I need to figure out who I am when I’m not managing your life.”
He sags. The fight goes out of him right there on the wood.
“Okay,” he whispers. “I’m here. Whenever you’re ready.”
“Goodbye, Ross.”
I end the call but don't move. I watch him lower the phone and stare at the ground. He doesn't know I'm ten yards away. He doesn't know I saw the bit slip, or the grease on his face, or the way he didn't give up.
I drop the sweaters onto the duvet. Wren’s guest room can stay empty. I’m staying right here.
And I’m going to watch.