Chapter 4
The front-door lock turns at six ten.
After a twelve-hour shift, I am waiting for coffee and assume Lucas forgot something.
Daphne steps inside with a key I have never seen, pulling a suitcase.
She stops when she sees me, tightening her hand around the new key.
“You’re home early.”
“I live here.”
The answer comes out flat. I am too tired to make it sharper.
She sets the suitcase beside the stairs. “My apartment isn’t ready. Lucas said I could stay in the guest room for a few weeks.”
The coffee maker clicks off behind me. Neither of us moves.
Four days ago, she needed my study. Now she has a key and luggage. Was the suitcase packed before my boxes were labeled?
Lucas comes downstairs fastening his cuff. He looks from Daphne to me, then at the key in her hand.
He is not surprised.
That hurts more than seeing her enter. Until this second, a small part of me still hoped she had misunderstood him or taken too much on her own. His face removes that excuse.
“Take the key back,” I say.
“Kate, she needs somewhere to stay.”
“Then help her find a hotel.”
“For a few weeks? That’s ridiculous.”
“Giving another woman a key to our home without telling me is ridiculous.”
His eyes narrow. “It’s my house.”
The words are quiet. The house is in his name, and he knows it.
When we married, Lucas called this our home. I chose the curtains, arranged Ethan’s school photographs, and learned which floorboard outside his room creaked. I stopped thinking about whose name came first.
Lucas has not forgotten.
Daphne looks down at the suitcase. “This was a mistake. I’ll go.”
She reaches for the handle slowly enough for him to stop her.
He does.
“You’re not going anywhere.” Lucas puts his hand over hers, then turns to me. “She has just moved back to Boston. You know how difficult that is.”
I look at their hands. Daphne does not pull hers away.
“I know exactly how difficult you intend to make it for her,” I say.
His expression hardens. “Listen to yourself. She offered to leave, and you still found a way to attack her.”
Daphne’s eyes shine. “I never wanted to come between you.”
The sentence is so close to an admission that I almost ask her to repeat it. Lucas is already rubbing her shoulder.
I pick up my coffee. My hand shakes, and a dark line spills over the rim onto the counter.
Lucas notices the mess before he notices my hand.
“You need sleep,” he says. “We’ll discuss this when you’re rational.”
I carry the cup upstairs.
In our bedroom, I close the door and sit on the edge of the bed. My body wants the shower, the dark, and six hours without anyone speaking to me. Instead, I open the bottom drawer.
I take out my passport, nursing licenses, birth certificate, and the folder containing my mother’s papers. Her small gold locket is in the back, wrapped in the handkerchief she used to wear in her coat pocket.
My mother gave me the locket before my wedding and told me to keep something that was mine alone. I hold it until the metal warms, then put it in my bag.
Then I add medication, two changes of clothes, spare scrubs, and the charger Lucas always borrows and never returns.
I am not leaving today. I still have nowhere prepared to go.
But last week I would have said I did not need to prepare.
I wait until Lucas and Daphne are talking in the kitchen, then lock the bag in my car and message the first landlord I saved: Is the room still available?
That evening, Lucas sends a message: Dinner at my mother’s tomorrow. Be there by six. He does not mention Daphne’s key or her suitcase.