Chapter 3: What the Phone Said
The message on the screen was short.
*Miss you already.
Tonight was everything.*
The name above it was Dana.
I set the phone down carefully.
My hands were steadier than I expected.
"Who is Dana?"
Finn reached for the phone.
I moved it further from him.
"Who.
Is.
Dana, Finn."
He exhaled slowly, the way someone does when they've been rehearsing an answer and still don't like any of them.
"She's a colleague."
"A colleague who misses you already." I looked at him.
"A colleague who thinks tonight was everything."
"It's not what it looks like."
"Then tell me what it looks like.
Because from where I'm standing, it looks like you spent the evening with another woman, came home, told me our marriage needed honesty, and then tried to hide your phone."
He sat down on the arm of the sofa.
Not in it — on the arm, like he was ready to leave at any second.
"We've been having problems, Nora.
You know that."
"I know you've been making comments about my body for eight months while I kept two human beings alive.
I didn't know that counted as problems serious enough to go find someone else."
"I didn't go find someone else.
It's complicated."
"Uncomplicate it."
He looked at the floor.
"Dana and I have been talking for a while.
It started as work stuff.
Then it became more."
"More."
"Conversations.
Just conversations."
I picked up the phone again and held it toward him.
"Does *tonight was everything* sound like a conversation to you?"
He didn't answer.
The twins were asleep down the hall.
I could hear the white noise machine through the door — that soft, steady hiss we'd bought because the older one startled easily.
I'd researched it for two hours.
Finn had been texting Dana while I did.
"How long?" I asked.
"Nora—"
"How long, Finn."
He rubbed the back of his neck.
"Four months."
Four months.
The twins had been three months old when it started.
I had been surviving on four hours of sleep and cold coffee, and he had been falling for someone else.
"Get out," I said.
"Nora, we need to talk about this properly—"
"I am being completely proper.
Get out of this room.
Go sleep in the guest room.
And tomorrow, when the babies are with my mother, we are going to have the conversation you apparently think we need to have."
He stood up slowly.
"I'm not the only one who checked out of this marriage."
I looked at him for a long moment.
"I checked out of nothing.
I was busy keeping our family alive.
There's a difference."
He walked down the hall without another word.
I sat in the quiet living room for a long time.
His portrait was still propped against the wall — the AI version of him, older, heavier, lined.
I'd meant it as a joke.
A mirror held up to his cruelty.
Now it just looked like a warning I'd made too late.
I picked up my phone and called my sister.
She answered on the second ring.
"Hey.
How did the gift go?"
"He's been seeing someone for four months."
Silence.
Then: "I'm coming over."
"The babies are asleep."
"I know.
I'll be quiet.
Don't move."
I didn't move.
I sat there until I heard her key in the lock, and when she came through the door and saw my face, she didn't say anything at all.
She just sat down beside me and took my hand.
That was when I started to cry.
Not because I was broken.
Because for the first time all night, I wasn't alone in the room.
My sister's name was Carla.
She was three years older than me, and she had never liked Finn — not from the beginning.
She'd smiled at the wedding and said nothing.
She'd held her tongue for five years.
She held it now too, for a little while.
Then she said, quietly: "Does he know you know everything?"
"He knows I saw the message."
"That's not everything," Carla said.
"Nora.
I need to tell you something."
I turned to look at her.
"I've seen them together.
Three weeks ago.
Outside the restaurant on Clement Street." She paused.
"I didn't know how to tell you."
The white noise machine hummed down the hall.
"You should have told me," I said.
"I know." Her hand tightened around mine.
"I'm sorry.
I kept thinking it might be nothing.
I kept thinking you had enough to carry."
I looked at the portrait of Finn still leaning against the wall.
"It wasn't nothing," I said.
Carla followed my gaze.
She looked at the portrait for a long moment.
May you like
"No," she said quietly.
"It wasn't."
