Chapter 3
I heard him before I smelled him.
Bare feet on hardwood, that particular soft slap of his heel-first walk, the one I could identify in the dark after five years of sharing a floor plan. I was already at the stove, the batter poured, the first pancake setting at the edges the way it does when you leave it alone long enough.
His arms came around me from behind.
His lips found the back of my neck—the same spot he'd pressed his face into last night, the same spot where I'd first caught the coconut smell—and he said it in exactly that voice. Low. Warm. The voice of a man who has nothing to hide.
"Morning, babe. I drank way too much last night. Don't remember a thing."
I didn't remember a thing.
I turned that sentence over in my mouth three times. Chewed on it. He didn't remember saying Brielle's name into the dark. Didn't remember the 11:47 message, the one where he told her that coming home felt wrong everywhere. But he remembered this—the arms, the neck, the exact register of voice that used to make me feel like the only person in a room.
He remembered how to do this just fine.
I kept my eyes on the pancake. Watched the bubbles form at the center, small and slow.
"What time did you get in?" I asked.
My voice came out steady. Steadier than I expected. Steadier than I felt, which was a kind of cold and distant thing, like watching myself from the other side of a window.
"Around midnight, maybe?" He moved to the coffee maker, pulled his mug from the cabinet. "We went until the bar closed. Some of the guys from the Harmon account—you know how Marcus gets when he starts buying rounds."
"Mm."
"Ran into Danny Park, actually. From college. He looks exactly the same, it's annoying."
He laughed. Easy. Unbothered.
Every sentence landed clean, no hesitation, no micro-pause where a lie usually lives. If I hadn't spent three hours on the floor of Mia's room reading seven months of his messages, I would have believed every word. I would have laughed about Danny Park. I would have turned around and handed him a pancake and that would have been the whole morning.
I flipped the pancake.
I did not turn around.
---
Nora was already awake and making her opinions known from the high chair, both palms flat on the tray, slapping a rhythm that meant *food, now, immediately.*
I set a plate in front of her first—pancake cut into small squares, the way she liked, no syrup because she'd just wear it—and then I put Kade's plate at his usual spot and sat down across from him with mine.
Normal. Everything normal.
Kade picked up his fork and started cutting. Nora grabbed a square with her fist and shoved it in her mouth. He looked at her and smiled, that particular soft smile he only had for her, and something in my chest moved in a direction I didn't want it to move.
I watched his hands.
Those hands had transferred four hundred and twelve dollars to a girl in a gray Champion hoodie. Those hands had typed *tonight I really missed you* while I was in the next room folding laundry. They were the same hands now cutting pancake into small pieces for our daughter, steady and careful, like a man who had his life in order.
He reached for his phone. A quick glance—just a flicker, the way you check something you're expecting—and then his face settled back into ordinary. Nothing changed. Not a muscle.
He'd looked. He'd checked. And he'd found nothing, because I'd left nothing to find.
He set the phone face-down on the table.
"Work group," he said, not quite looking at me. "Ignore it."
I smiled. "On a Saturday morning?"
He shrugged. "You know how it is."
I did know. I knew exactly how it was.
Work groups don't message at eight AM on Saturdays. But a twenty-two-year-old music student in Haikou, twelve time zones away, might. The math on that was simple.
"Hey," I said, and my voice came out light, almost cheerful, "should we take Nora to Barton Springs today? It's supposed to be nice."
He looked up. Smiled. "Yeah, that sounds good. She'd love that."
"She really would."
And just like that, we had a plan for the day.
---
Barton Springs was crowded the way it always is on a warm Saturday—kids in floaties, someone's dog trying to get into the water, the smell of sunscreen and wet grass hanging over everything. Nora went stiff with excitement the second her feet touched the shallow end, that full-body vibration she does, arms out, not sure whether to laugh or scream.
I held her hands while she splashed. She splashed me deliberately, looked up at my face to check my reaction, then did it again.
Kade went to get ice cream. He'd asked what flavor I wanted—I said whatever—and I'd watched him walk away through the crowd, his shoulders easy, his stride unhurried. A man on a normal Saturday. A man getting ice cream for his family.
I waited until he was far enough.
Then I sat Nora in the shallow water with her bucket, close enough that I could grab her in one second, and I took out my phone.
Brielle's Instagram loaded fast. The profile photo—the laugh, the high ponytail, the uncomplicated prettiness. I looked at it for a long moment. Then I looked at the gray hoodie in the post below it, the sleeves pushed up, the single heart emoji.
I hit Follow.
The request sent.
Nora splashed water onto my ankle. I looked down at her and she beamed at me, proud of herself, and I said "wow, very impressive" in the voice I use when she does something she thinks is clever.
Three seconds later, my screen lit up.
Brielle had accepted.
And right there at the top of her Story feed—a new one, posted minutes ago—was a frame I almost had to look at twice. A man's forearm, cropped close. Strong wrist. The small rectangular device strapped to it, black band, familiar shape.
Kade's Fitbit. The one I'd given him for his birthday.
The location tag said Haikou.
The caption said: *miss you.*
I stared at it for a long time. The water moved around my ankles. Nora splashed again. Somewhere behind me, Kade was probably paying for ice cream, probably smiling at the person behind the counter, probably completely at ease.
I lowered my phone.
He was walking back toward us now, two ice cream cones in hand, squinting a little against the sun, and when he spotted me and Nora in the shallows his whole face opened up—easy, warm, the face of a man who had everything he needed right in front of him.
I raised my hand and waved.
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