Chapter 156
Chapter 156
Ethan
The door to Claire's studio was propped open with a concrete block, letting in the gray afternoon light along with the sound of traffic from the street below. I paused on the threshold, taking in the scene before me: Mia and Julian Cross sat at a wide table covered with printed pages, their heads bent together over what appeared to be exhibition text. Claire worked at a computer across the room, occasionally glancing up to offer opinions.
Julian said something I couldn't hear, and Mia laughed—a genuine, unguarded sound that I heard so rarely during our marriage. She reached across the table to adjust something on one of the pages, and Julian's eyes followed the movement of her hand with an appreciation he probably didn't realize was visible.
They looked right together. That was the thought that struck me as I stood there unnoticed, watching them collaborate. They spoke the same language, shared the same references, existed in the same creative world that I'd never fully understood. Julian saw her work and grasped its meaning instinctively; I had to study it, analyze it, translate it into frameworks I could comprehend.
If I wasn't here—if something happened on that operating table or in the weeks that followed—she wouldn't be alone for long. Someone like Julian would recognize what he was looking at. Someone without my history of coldness, my baggage of suspicion, my fumbling attempts to love her properly too late.
The thought should have felt like jealousy. Instead, it arrived as something closer to relief, edged with a sorrow I had no right to feel.
Mia looked up then, sensing my presence, and her face brightened in a way that made my chest constrict. "You came."
"I said I would." I stepped into the studio, nodding at Julian and Claire in turn. "How's it going?"
"Good. Great, actually." She was already gathering her bag, her coat. "We finished the wall text for the main series. Julian had some ideas about framing the narrative that really worked."
"I can't take credit," Julian said, rising to shake my hand with the careful courtesy of a man who understood exactly where he stood. "Mia's instincts are always right. I just helped her articulate what she already knew."
I held his gaze a moment longer than necessary, but there was nothing to find there—no challenge, no resentment, just the quiet awareness of someone who'd seen enough of the world to recognize complicated situations. Whatever he felt for Mia, he was keeping it firmly in check.
"Thank you for your help with the exhibition," I said, and meant it.
"Thank you for supporting it." His eyes flickered to Mia and back to me. "She deserves to be seen."
Yes. She does.
---
I suggested dinner at the house almost before I'd finished forming the thought, and Mia's surprised pleasure made the spontaneity worth it. The children had already been fed by the time we arrived, but Rosa produced a simple meal while we took turns holding the twins, and for a precious hour we were something resembling a normal family.
Leo demonstrated his new trick of grabbing fistfuls of air in the direction of anything shiny, while Lily practiced her skeptical expression on anyone foolish enough to make faces at her. Mia caught my eye across the table and smiled, and I filed the moment away with the desperate precision of someone who'd finally learned the value of what he'd almost lost.
After dinner, I insisted she rest while I handled bedtime—bath, pajamas, the elaborate ritual of songs and stories that Rosa had established and I was still learning. Mia watched from the doorway of the nursery, her shoulder against the frame, and I felt her gaze like warmth on my back as I fumbled with the snaps on Lily's sleep suit.
"You're getting better at that," she observed.
"Practice." I looked up at her and found myself memorizing the way the dim light caught the planes of her face—the slight upturn of her nose, the fullness of her lower lip, the fine lines at the corners of her eyes that hadn't been there two years ago. "I should have practiced more from the beginning."
"You're here now."
Three simple words, but they landed somewhere in my chest and stayed there.
Later, as I drove her back to her apartment, she talked about the exhibition—which pieces were giving her trouble, which ones had come together perfectly, the anxiety and excitement that churned together every time she thought about opening night. I listened and responded and asked questions, but part of me was simply absorbing the sound of her voice, the animated gestures, the passion that lit her up from within.
This. This was what she was meant for. Not the slow suffocation of a loveless marriage, not the endless obligation of caring for someone else's family, but this—creation, expression, the translation of inner vision into external form.
When I pulled up outside her building, she unfastened her seatbelt but didn't immediately move to leave. Instead, she turned to face me, something searching in her expression.
"Thank you for tonight," she said. "The kids were so happy to see us together."
"They miss you."
"I miss them." A pause. "I miss... a lot of things."
The space between us seemed to contract. I could smell her perfume—something light, floral, so different from the expensive designer scents that filled my mother's world—and beneath it the indefinable essence that was simply her. My hands tightened on the steering wheel to keep from reaching for her.
She leaned across the console and kissed my cheek. Her lips were soft, warm, and gone before I could properly register the contact. I sat frozen, afraid that any movement might shatter the moment.
"Goodnight, Ethan." She was already opening her door, slipping out into the cold November air.
"Goodnight."
I watched her walk to the entrance, turn to wave, disappear inside. The glass doors swung shut behind her, and I was alone with the ghost of her touch still burning against my skin.
I should have told her. The thought rose unbidden, bringing with it a wave of something that felt dangerously close to grief. I should have said: There's something wrong with me. There's something growing inside my head. There's a chance—not large, but real—that I won't be here in six months, in a year, in whatever time constitutes a normal future.
But telling her would mean watching her face crumble. It would mean feeling her hand tighten around mine with that familiar blend of fear and determination. It would mean becoming, once again, the center of her universe—not because she wanted to be there, but because she wouldn't know how to be anywhere else.
I couldn't do that to her. Not when she'd finally learned to want things for herself.
---
The house was quiet when I returned. Rosa had retired to her quarters, and the babies slept in their darkened room with the white noise machine humming its endless ocean sounds. I stood outside their door for several minutes, watching through the gap, letting the sight of their peaceful faces anchor me to something beyond the chaos in my own head.
Then I went to my study, opened my laptop, and created a new document.
For Leo and Lily, I typed.
And then I stopped, because what do you say to children who might never know you? What words could possibly encompass everything I wanted them to understand—that they were loved, that they were wanted, that their father's absence wasn't abandonment but simply the cruelest kind of bad luck?
I deleted the title. Typed it again. Deleted it.
In the end, I closed the laptop without saving anything.
The Chicago sky outside my window was clouded over, the usual scattered stars hidden behind the gray ceiling of the city's light pollution and approaching weather. I turned off the desk lamp and sat in darkness, letting my eyes adjust to the shapes of furniture and books and the life I'd built without ever really inhabiting it.
Thirteen days until the exhibition.
Four weeks until I ran out of time to delay.
And somewhere in between, I would have to find a way to give her everything I should have given years ago—without her ever knowing it might be goodbye.