The wife I forgot to love

Helena picked up on the fourth ring.

She almost did not.

"Helena." A pause. Like he was relieved she answered and nervous about it at the same time. "It is Marcus. Damian's Marcus. I know. I know this is weird. Just." Another pause. "Please don't hang up."

Cassidy had gone very still across the counter.

Helena turned toward the window. "Marcus."

"Yeah." He exhaled. "Hi. I have been sitting with my phone for about forty minutes trying to figure out how to start this and I still do not have a good answer so I am just going to say it." A beat. "I am sorry, Helena. For not calling sooner. For staying quiet through all of it. I kept telling myself it was not my place and I think I was just being a coward."

Helena said nothing.

"I watched what happened," Marcus said. "I was right there. I saw how he was treating you those last few months and I did not say anything to him the way I should have and I definitely did not say anything to you and that was wrong." His voice was genuine. A little rough around the edges the way voices get when someone is saying something they actually mean. "You were always good to him. You were good to both of us. And you deserved better than the silence you got from everyone in his corner."

"Marcus," Helena said quietly.

"I know. I know you do not need this right now. I just." He stopped. "I needed to say it. And there is something else." A pause. "I am not calling to make a case for him. I want to be clear about that. What he did was his choice and he has to live with it. But there is something about him and Camila that goes back long before you came into his life. Something heavy that he never talked about. Not even to me properly." His voice dropped slightly. "Camila saved him once. A long time ago. In a way that left a mark on him he never dealt with. That is all I am going to say about it because the rest of it is his to tell. But I wanted you to know that the man you were married to was carrying something that had nothing to do with you not being enough."

The apartment was quiet.

Helena felt something move through her that she could not immediately name.

"She saved him," she said. "From what."

"That part," Marcus said, "I am going to leave alone."

"Marcus."

"I know. I'm sorry. But it is genuinely not my story." He paused. "Just know that it happened. And it mattered. And he has never known how to put it down."

Helena stood at the window looking at the city for a moment.

"Why are you telling me this now," she said.

"Because Cassidy told me you got a role," he said. "And that you are doing something real with your life now. And I just." A short pause. "I did not want you out there thinking the whole story was your fault. Because it was not. And you should know that."

Helena was quiet for a moment.

"Thank you Marcus," she said. And she meant it.

"Yeah." His voice was softer now. The awkward part done. "Take care of yourself, Helena. You deserved better. I hope you know that."

The line went quiet.

Helena stood at the window for a long moment after.

Then she turned around.

Cassidy was looking at her with both hands wrapped around her cup and her eyes doing everything her mouth was not saying.

"He saved his life," Cassidy said.

"Camila saved his," Helena said. "Apparently. A long time ago." She set her phone down on the counter. "He would not say what happened."

Cassidy opened her mouth.

"I know," Helena said. "I know what you are going to say."

"I was not going to say anything," Cassidy said.

"You were."

"I was going to say that explains absolutely nothing and also explains everything and I need a minute." Cassidy put her cup down. "Are you okay."

Helena thought about it honestly. "I do not know what I am," she said. "But I have a six o clock call time tomorrow and I need to sleep so I am going to figure that out later."

She did not sleep particularly well.

But she got up at five and made coffee and stood in her kitchen in the dark and told herself that what Marcus had said was information. Not an instruction. Not an open door. Just a piece of the picture she had not been able to see before. She filed it somewhere quiet and got dressed and went to set because the work was waiting and the work did not care what she was carrying.

The warehouse was already alive when she arrived. She walked in and breathed through the flutter in her chest the way Jordan had told her to breathe through things and found her corner and went over her lines one more time until they stopped feeling like words and started feeling like things she would actually say.

Jordan found her before the first scene.

"How are you," Jordan said.

"Ready," Helena said.

Jordan looked at her for one second with the eyes of a woman who had been making films for fifteen years.

"Good," she said. And moved on.

The scenes went better than Helena had expected. She had been afraid the nerves would make her small and careful. But something happened the same way it had happened in the audition room. The camera rolled and she stopped managing herself and just existed inside the moment and let whatever was true come forward.

Jordan called cut after the third take and said nothing for a long moment. Then she nodded once at her assistant and moved to the next setup.

One nod. Helena felt it land in her chest like something that was going to stay.

They ran two more scenes. Both of them went the same way.

When Jordan walked past her at wrap she said two words without slowing down or looking at her.

"Good work."

Helena stood in the quiet of the empty set and breathed.

She picked up her bag and walked out into the evening feeling something she did not have a full name for yet. Not happiness exactly. Something quieter and more solid than that. Something that belonged entirely to her and had nothing to do with anyone else.

She was almost at her car when her phone buzzed.

A text. Not a call this time.

She looked at the screen.

It was from a number she did not recognise. No name saved. Just a number and four words.

We need to talk.

Helena stood in the car park with the evening around her and looked at those four words for a long moment.

Then she looked up.

Across the car park, leaning against a black car with his hands in his pockets and his eyes on her, was a man she had never seen before in her life.

He was not moving.

He was just watching her.

Waiting to see if she had read it.