His pause was the answer.
Natalie nodded slowly, absorbing the impact like a punch. "Wow."
"I didn’t plan for this to happen. It just... it happened. And it made me realize how far apart we’ve grown."
"You could have talked to me."
"And said what? That I don’t know if I love you anymore? That I feel like a ghost in my own house?"
She flinched.
He looked like he regretted it the second it came out. But it was too late.
She crossed her arms over her chest, as if to hold herself together. "So that’s it? You’ve made up your mind?"
He looked at her for a long moment. "I don’t know. I need space."
"Then take it," she said. "Take all the space you need."
He moved toward the closet, pulled on a shirt, jeans, grabbed his keys. His cologne lingered behind him, the same scent she used to love, now cloying and foreign.
"I’ll go to Ed’s," he muttered. "Give you time to think."
But she could tell it was he who needed the distance. He who couldn’t stand the sight of what he’d broken. The door slammed behind him. Natalie stood in the silence he left behind, the final cycle of the dishwasher the only sound in the house.
She didn’t move for a long time. Just stood there, staring at the place where the stockings had been, the air still tainted with perfume that didn’t belong to her. Her legs finally gave out, andshe sank to the floor, back against the bed she would never sleep in again. No tears. Not yet. Only the sound of her own breath, shallow and uneven, and the yawning ache that opened inside her like a chasm.
This was the moment her marriage ended. No lawyers. No documents. Just black lace, a slammed door, and a silence that echoed louder than any words. Outside, the city kept moving, indifferent, unfeeling. Inside, Natalie Carrington sat alone in the ruins of what used to be her life. And for the first time in a long time, she had no idea what came next.
2
The morning light filtered through the bedroom blinds, softly, as if unsure whether it should intrude on the remnants of the night before. Natalie lay on her side in the guest room, her back to the window, cocooned beneath the duvet. She hadn’t moved for hours.
Sleep had come in broken fragments, a blur of shallow dreaming and long stretches of staring at the walls. Her limbs were heavy, her throat dry. Around her, the room was still but not peaceful, as though it was absorbing her restlessness. She rolled onto her back and stared up at the plastered ceiling, her heart raw in her chest, her mouth a grim line.
This house had always felt like an extension of them. A tastefully curated life wrapped in exposed brick and polished floors, scented candles and bookcases arranged with spines aligned like soldiers. They had picked it out together, walked through every room arm-in-arm, imagining Sunday mornings and dinner parties and the children they might one day raise here. Now it felt like a mausoleum.
Natalie sat up slowly. Her muscles ached, her head pounded from lack of sleep, and something in her chesttwisted with every breath. She swung her legs over the side of the bed, the wood floor cool beneath her bare feet. Immediately she thought of the lacy underwear she’d found on the floor of their room, now was gone, thrown it into the trash with a kind of grim finality, but the memory lingered, clear and savage.
She moved through the house like a sick person and poured herself a glass of water in the kitchen then leaned against the sink, watching a pair of pigeon’s peck at breadcrumbs on the windowsill. The spring sunlight illuminated the soft gold of the cabinets, the stone countertops, the hanging copper pans, but it felt hollow, not a home and more like a lie.
What had all this been for? The silence was filled with questions she didn’t want to ask and answers she already knew. Natalie padded into the living room and sank onto the couch, legs curled beneath her, arms one another. The blanket draped across the back felt soft against her cheek as she rested against it.
She stared at the wedding photo on the mantle. They were laughing in it. She was in ivory lace, her hair swept back in soft waves, her eyes bright with promise. Giles was in a deep navy suit, his smile so easy, so sure. They had been standing on the bluff in Martha’s Vineyard, the ocean behind them, the wind catching her veil like it was ready to carry her away. Her cheeks had a flush from champagne and sun and happiness. She closed her eyes, and the memory came flooding back. The smell of salt in the air. The clink of glasses. The way he whispered into her ear, "You make everything feel possible."
She had believed him.
They had danced barefoot in the sand, his arms wrapped around her waist, her cheek against his shoulder. Guests had gathered around a bonfire later that night, toasting marshmallows and singing to an old guitar, and she had lookedat Giles, silhouetted in the firelight, and thought that it was forever. But forever, she was learning, was fragile.
She stayed on the couch for over an hour, unmoving. Her mind drifted between then and now, pinballing through fragments of memories: weekend hikes, shared recipes, the night he first told her he loved her beneath a canopy of Christmas lights. The first time she stayed late at the clinic, and he brought her dinner, joking that he could never compete with a litter of kittens. The warmth of his arms when she came home crying after losing a patient. The way they used to reach for each other in sleep without even waking. All of it felt like a story someone else had told her once, a fairytale that no longer made sense.
Finally, she stood. She couldn’t sit here all day, surrounded by ruins and memories and regrets. She needed air. No. She needed space.
The first chore Natalie tackled that morning was the hardest. Maria, the practice manager, someone she regarded as a good friend and not just a colleague, listened in silence and confidence while Natalie explained what she’d walked into the evening before. And after asking for privacy and compassionate leave which Maria granted in a beat, Natalie quickly ended the call. She couldn’t bear sympathy or kindness, it was too much and would break the barrier she was building around herself.
Then she sat at the kitchen table, composing her thoughts, her laptop closed, the screen dark. A mug of untouched coffee cooled by her side. The silence of the house was loud and unforgiving. Every creak of the wood floors, every tick of the wall clock, only emphasized how alone she was.
She looked pale in the soft morning light, the shadows under her eyes like bruises from a battle she hadn’t meant to fight. Her chestnut hair, usually smoothed and tied back with precision, fell in a loose, tangled braid down her shoulder. Shewore an old college sweatshirt and leggings, mohair socks warming her feet on the hardwood floor. There was a rawness to her, an unguarded vulnerability in the slope of her shoulders and the tight line of her jaw. A woman unraveling but still sitting upright.
