Chapter 4 Ethan
Ethan
Margot sits at the kitchen counter, laughing as I attempt to revive an omelet that clearly wants to be scrambled eggs.
“I can save it,” I say, gently scooting the eggs around in the pan.
Margot takes a bite of her own omelet, which came out perfectly, and rolls her eyes at me.
Finally, I relent, sighing as I drive the spatula into the center of the omelet and start scrambling. It’s not that I mind scrambled eggs; it’s just a matter of pride at this point.
As I’m turning off the stove and plating my food, a text alert chimes on my phone, which my Bluetooth speaker reads aloud in a robotic tone: New house just hit the market. It checks all your boxes, but it’s going to sell quickly. Call me when you get this.
Margot looks up at me, eyebrows lifted curiously. “Are you looking at houses?”
I walk to the sink and run water into the pan, keeping my eyes averted as I shake my head. “It’s not for me. I’m just helping my sister-in-law and niece look for a place here in Denver.”
Not a total lie, but far from the entire truth.
She smiles. “That’s nice of you.”
I smile back, because it’s easier than explaining the jagged pieces of my past. My love life may be an open book these days—that stupid magazine article dubbing me Denver’s Most Eligible Bachelor made sure of that—but some chapters are meant to stay closed.
Once I’m done eating, I excuse myself and head up to my home office to call my real estate agent back.
He sends me the listing, and I pull it up on my computer.
He’s right, it checks all my boxes: nice neighborhood, good schools, a big yard where Sophia can play.
It’s overpriced for a three-bedroom, fourteen-hundred-square-foot craftsman bungalow, but that’s Denver for you, and money is far from my top concern.
It also checks the most important box of all: it’s in Littleton, a short drive from Denver, but far enough away to keep some distance between Rachel and me.
We have a complicated past. On paper, she was never really my sister-in-law. She was my wife.
It started the way most disasters do: with Silas.
My oldest brother has always been the primary source of drama in the North family.
While the rest of us got through the rough patches by leaning on each other, Silas fought everyone and everything, especially himself.
Drugs, booze, arrests—that’s been his greatest hits album for as long as I can remember.
He drifted in and out of our lives, and every time he came back, it was hard to know whether to hope for the best or brace for impact.
Six years ago, he showed up clean (or at least claiming to be), and with a woman on his arm.
That was a first. Rachel was sweet but completely oblivious to the human wrecking ball she’d attached herself to.
But it seemed like Silas really loved her, so we were all cautiously optimistic.
For a few months, it almost looked like this time might be different.
Then Rachel found out she was pregnant.
Silas didn’t rise to the occasion; he drowned in it.
Stole from Garrett, went on a bender, landed back in jail.
Rachel was both shocked and terrified. She had nowhere to go, no family nearby, no one at all in Denver aside from my family.
After months of picking up the slack on their bills while Silas offered flimsy excuses for his mysteriously disappearing money, Rachel’s bank account had a negative balance and her waitress job was barely keeping her afloat.
So, I offered her a place to stay. It was supposed to be temporary.
We got closer, and when I found out she was skipping doctor’s appointments because she didn’t have health insurance and couldn’t afford to miss a shift at the diner, I made another offer: marriage. Just on paper. Just for the insurance, the security. It was supposed to be fake.
Except it wasn’t… not entirely.
Over time, Rachel and I built something that felt real, even if we never admitted it out loud.
When Sophia was born, I was in the delivery room, holding Rachel’s hand.
Then Sophia looked up at me for the first time, and it was impossible not to feel like maybe this was actually it for me. A family. My family.
We’d gotten ourselves into a strange situation, and it was a strange sort of love that bloomed. More companionship than passion, but it worked for us… for a while.
Then the letters started coming. Silas’s name was in the upper left corner, followed by a prison address. Rachel swore they didn’t matter, but I saw the way she tucked them away instead of throwing them out. I felt the distance growing between us.
The first time Sophia called me “Daddy,” everything inside me shifted. I already loved her like she was my own.
Things between Rachel and me weren’t as easy. I kept telling myself that if I leaned in hard enough, if I wanted it bad enough, I’d fall for her for real.
Meanwhile, she was drowning in doubt.
Eventually, she admitted it.
Rachel hated Silas for what he did, but she missed the feeling of being in love with him.
The letters he wrote reminded her of those feelings.
They made her realize that we were going through the motions but lacking the actual emotions of a marriage.
We were bound together by our love for Sophia, but that wasn’t enough to keep our relationship afloat.
So, she left. Went to live with a distant aunt in Texas for a while until she got back on her feet. Our only contact has been an occasional text about Sophia, along with the Christmas and birthday gifts I’ve sent over the years.
When Rachel called a few weeks ago to tell me that her aunt is selling the house, it was the first time we’d spoken in two years.
She said she was thinking about moving back to Denver and wanted to know how I might feel about that.
I told her it was a great idea… then I offered to buy a house for them.
Because in the end, Rachel was right: her and I were never meant to be, but Sophia should grow up surrounded by people who love her, and she will be here in Denver.
Which is how I ended up sitting in this chair, staring at overpriced real estate listings and hiding this weird, slightly fucked up part of my past from my assistant, who is currently eating an omelet in my kitchen.
To say it’s been a weird weekend would be an understatement.
“I can meet you there in an hour,” I tell my real estate agent as I mentally commit to the idea of buying a house for my ex-wife.
Looks like this weekend will just keep getting weirder…
***
When I get home in the late afternoon, I find Margot sitting on a barstool with her e-reader lit up on the kitchen counter.
Even though I’m dying to know how someone like Margot ends up reading books about big blue aliens and their inadequate loincloths, I resist the urge to bring it up again.
Clearly, it embarrasses her more than it should.
We all have our things, and I’m not one to judge.
She glances over her shoulder and greets me with a quiet “Hey” while simultaneously closing the cover over her screen.
“Hey,” I say back.
“I was going to text you. I’m leaving in a few minutes.”
My eyes drop to the freshly laundered black dress she’s wearing and high heels that look sorely out of place for a Sunday afternoon.
“You could have kept the clothes I gave you,” I tell her, recalling the way she wobbled on those heels even before she was drunk the other night.
“Thanks, but I don’t think I should show up in another guy’s clothes. Jeremy told me he would be out of the apartment by five o’clock, but for obvious reasons, I don’t really trust anything he says right now.”
I nod, although that raises more questions than it answers.
“How are you getting home?” I ask.
“I ordered a Lyft. It should be here in ten minutes.”
“Cancel it.”
“What? Why?” she asks.
“I’ll drive you.”
She shakes her head. “You don’t need to do that.”
“I want to,” I assure her. “Besides, I’m not doing anything else.”
It’s true. It’s also true that I’m not going to let her walk into that apartment alone if there’s even a remote chance that her asshole ex-boyfriend didn’t make good on his promise to move out.
Margot knows me pretty well, so she knows better than to argue with me on this.
“Okay,” she relents, pulling up the app and canceling her ride.
Twenty minutes later, we arrive at Margot’s apartment complex. She tries to tell me that I don’t need to come up, but I disagree and follow her up the stairs to her front door. She pauses with her key in the lock, her shoulders stiff as she turns to me with an imploring look.
“Wait out here for a minute, okay? If Jeremy is still in there and he sees you, it’s going to be a problem. I’ll come back for you in a minute then you can do your security sweep or whatever it is that you think you’re going to do.”
I nod reluctantly. “If I hear yelling, I’m coming in.”
“Understood.”
Margot turns the knob and slowly opens the door, stepping inside. She leaves it slightly ajar behind her, and I wait patiently for her to come back.
A minute goes by. Then another. And another.
Something’s wrong, I decide, so I crack the door a little wider and listen for a few seconds. It’s silent inside the apartment.
“Margot?” I holler.
Nothing.
“I’m coming in,” I announce, opening the door a little wider and stepping into the apartment.
The only thing in the living room is a green velvet armchair and a vintage end table with a little gold lamp on it. There are divots in the carpet where the rest of the furniture used to be and a few nails protruding from the blank walls.
I cross the room and head down the only hallway. Margot walks out of a door at the end, stopping me in my tracks. Her eyes are red and glassy. She jerks her hand up to her cheek and quickly wipes away a tear.
“Margot, what’s wrong?” I ask.