Chapter 1 - "I can't."
"You've been awake all night."
"So has Victor, probably."
Elena raised one eyebrow.
"That sounds like Victor's problem."
I almost smiled.
Almost.
Then my phone vibrated again.
This time it wasn't Victor.
It was Daniel.
Victor's younger brother.
I hesitated before opening the message.
I don’t know where you are.
I don’t want to know if you don’t want me to.
I only need to know the babies are warm and safe.
I stared at those words.
Daniel had always been different from Victor.
Where Victor entered a room and somehow made everyone aware of him, Daniel seemed to spend his life trying not to take up too much space.
I typed slowly.
They’re safe.
Three dots appeared almost immediately.
Thank God.
Then:
May I tell him that much?
Nothing else.
I looked down at Leo.
"Tell him," I whispered.
I sent the message.
Elena sat across from me.
"You're going to have to talk to Victor eventually."
"I know."
"Not today."
I looked at her gratefully.
"No.
Not today."
For the next several hours, the storm gave me something I desperately needed.
Time.
Victor couldn't simply appear at the door because he didn't know which door to find.
And I hadn't chosen Elena's house randomly.
Three months earlier, when I had finally admitted to myself that my marriage was becoming something I no longer recognized, Elena had offered me the keys to her late mother's cottage outside the city.
No questions.
No lectures.
Just keys.
I had hidden them in the lining of an old handbag.
I hadn't planned to leave on a particular night.
That was the part Victor would never understand.
There had been no single dramatic betrayal.
It had been accumulation.
A thousand tiny disappointments.
The unanswered messages.
The empty chair at dinner.
The way he said, "Not now, Nora," whenever I tried to discuss something difficult.
The morning Leo came home from the neonatal unit and Victor spent forty minutes on a business call before holding him.
The evening Mia developed a fever and I sat beside her hospital crib alone because Victor was "handling something."
And Sylvia.
Always Sylvia.
Beautiful, polished Sylvia Moretti, who had worked beside Victor for years.
I had seen the messages.
Need you tonight.
Same place.
Don’t tell Nora yet.
Maybe I should have confronted him.
Instead, I had become quieter.
So had our marriage.
At noon, Elena convinced me to sleep.
When I woke two hours later, the house smelled like tomato soup.
Leo was sleeping beside Elena while she folded tiny onesies.
"You didn't have to do laundry."
"You arrived with premature twins during a blizzard.
Laundry is the least interesting part of this situation."
I smiled despite myself.
Then she nodded toward my phone.
"Your husband stopped calling."
Something inside me sank unexpectedly.
"Oh."
Elena studied me.
"You wanted him to keep calling?"
"No."
It came too quickly.
She didn't challenge me.
Instead, she said, "Sometimes wanting distance doesn't mean wanting someone to stop caring."
That sentence followed me for the rest of the afternoon.
At 4:17, Daniel sent another message.
Victor wants to send the twins’ specialist records.
Nothing else.
Can I email them to you?
That surprised me.
Victor had remembered.
The twins' complete medical files were stored in the locked office at home.
I sent Daniel a temporary email address.
Twenty minutes later, the records arrived.
There was no message from Victor.
Only the documents.
That restraint affected me more than thirty-two phone calls had.
That evening, after the twins were asleep, I finally turned my phone back on.
There was one voicemail.
Victor's voice sounded different.
Not angry.
Not commanding.
Tired.
"Nora.
Daniel told me you're safe."
A long pause.
"I won't try to trace your phone."
Another pause.
"I know you probably don't believe me."
I sat completely still.
"The roads are bad.
Leo's medicine needs refrigeration after opening.
I know you know that.
I'm not saying you don't.
I'm just…"
He stopped.
For several seconds there was nothing but breathing.
Then he continued.
"I don't know how to do this."
I had never heard Victor admit that about anything.
"I've sent the medical files through Daniel.
The pediatric office knows you may call.
I didn't tell them where you are because I don't know."
His voice lowered.
"I won't ask Daniel."
Another silence.
Then came the sentence that kept me awake half the night.
"I thought providing everything meant I was being a good husband.
I didn't notice that you had stopped expecting me to be one."
The voicemail ended.
No demand.
No accusation.
No threat.
I listened to it twice.
Then I deleted it.
Not because I hated him.
Because I didn't want one good voicemail to erase months of loneliness.
The following morning, the snow stopped.
Chicago slowly began digging itself out.
And Victor kept his promise.
He didn't appear.
He didn't send people.
He didn't contact Elena.
Instead, something stranger happened.
At eleven, Sylvia called me.
I almost dropped the phone.
I watched it ring until it stopped.
Then she called again.
Elena saw the name.
"Is that her?"
"Yes."
"The perfume woman?"
"Yes."
"Are you answering?"
"No."
The phone stopped.
A message appeared.
Nora, I know I’m probably the last person you want to hear from.
But there’s something you deserve to know.
It isn’t what you think.
I laughed bitterly.
Of course.
The oldest sentence in the history of betrayal.
It isn't what you think.
I put the phone away.
Two hours later, another message arrived.
I’m not asking you to believe me.
I’m asking for fifteen minutes whenever you’re ready.
Public place.
Elena can come.
Victor does not know I’m contacting you.
That made me pause.
How did she know Elena was with me?
Then I realized she probably didn't.
Elena was simply the only relative of mine Sylvia had met.
Still, I didn't respond.
For three days, the twins and I remained at the cottage.
I established routines.
Feedings.
Medicine.
Short naps.
Calls with the pediatrician.
Slow walks around the living room with Mia tucked against me while snow slid from the roof outside.
Victor sent nothing except practical information through Daniel.
On the fourth morning, Daniel asked whether I would accept a letter.
Not a message.
A handwritten letter.
I said yes.
A courier delivered it to Elena's apartment in the city, and Elena brought it to me unopened.
Victor's handwriting was unmistakable.
Nora,
I'm not going to ask you to come home.
That sentence hurt more than I expected.
He continued.
I'm beginning to understand that asking you to come home would assume the penthouse still feels like home to you.
I don't know when that stopped being true.
Maybe you tried to tell me.
Maybe I was too busy defending myself to listen.
I read slowly.
There were no dramatic declarations.
No promises that everything would magically change.
Victor wrote about Leo.
About how frightened he had been when our son was born weighing barely four pounds.
About Mia's tiny fingers wrapping around his thumb inside the neonatal unit.
Then he wrote something I had never known.
I was afraid to hold them.
The doctors kept saying how fragile they were.
Everyone expected me to know what to do because I'm their father.
I didn't.
Every time Leo cried, I thought I was going to hurt him by picking him up wrong.
So I let you do it.
And eventually I told myself you were simply better at it.
I had interpreted his distance as indifference.
Maybe some of it had been fear.
That didn't excuse everything.
But it complicated things.
Near the end, he wrote:
There is something else you deserve an explanation for.
Sylvia.
I will explain whenever you choose to hear it.
Not before.
I folded the letter.
Elena was watching me.
"Well?"
"He says there's an explanation."
"There usually is."
"You don't sound convinced."
"I didn't say it was a good explanation."
That evening, I called Victor.
He answered before the first ring had finished.
"Nora?"
Hearing his voice directly almost made me hang up.
Instead, I said, "The babies are fine."
He exhaled.
"Thank you."
"Mia gained two ounces."
A pause.
"She did?"
There was such uncomplicated happiness in his voice that my eyes burned.
"Yes."
"And Leo?"
"Still eating like he's personally responsible for bankrupting the formula company."
Victor laughed softly.
It was the first time I had heard him laugh in weeks.
Then neither of us knew what to say.
Finally, I asked, "Were you sleeping with Sylvia?"
"No."
The answer was immediate.
"Have you ever slept with Sylvia?"
"No."
"Have you kissed her?"
"No."
"Have you wanted to?"
Another immediate answer.
"No."
I closed my eyes.
"Then why did you come home smelling like her?"
Silence.
"Victor."
"Because she hugged me."
"At five in the morning?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
His voice changed.
"Nora, this isn't a conversation I should have over the phone."
"That's convenient."
"I know how it sounds."
"Do you?"
"Yes."
"Because I've spent months feeling like an idiot."
"You aren't."
"Don't tell me what I am."
"You're right."
That stopped me.
Victor almost never surrendered an argument that quickly.
He continued quietly.
"I'll tell you everything.
But part of it belongs to someone else, and I need their permission before I tell you."
"Whose?"
"I can't answer that yet."
I nearly laughed.
"Then we're right back where we started."
"No."
His voice remained calm.
"Before, I expected you to trust me without giving you anything worth trusting.
I'm not asking that anymore."
For several seconds, I listened to the faint sound of his breathing.
Then he asked, "Can I see them?"
My heart tightened.
"The babies."
"I know."
"Not today."
"Okay."
No argument.
No demand.
May you like
Just okay.
"Goodbye, Victor."
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