The wife I forgot to love

Cassidy was already at the kitchen table when Helena came downstairs, two coffees placed

with the precision of a woman who had done this before. Who had sat at this table before in

exactly this kind of morning.

She looked up when Helena walked in.

She didn't say anything right away. Just looked at her sister the way only Cassidy could, like

she was taking inventory of every single thing Helena was holding together and calculating

what was about to fall.

"Sit down," Cassidy said.

Helena sat.

Cassidy pushed one of the coffees across the table. "Talk to me. All of it. From the beginning."

"I already told you on the phone."

"You told me about a photo. I want to know about before the photo." Cassidy wrapped both

hands around her own cup. "How long has something felt off?"

Helena looked at her coffee.

"Three weeks," she said. "Maybe four."

"What kind of off?"

"Just..." She stopped. Tried to find the right word and kept finding the wrong ones. "Quiet. He

got quiet in a different way. Damian is always quiet but this felt like quiet that was pointed

somewhere else. Like he was present but saving the real version of himself for later."Cassidy nodded slowly. "His phone?"

"Always face down. Always." Helena wrapped her hands around the cup. "He used to leave it

anywhere. On the counter, on the bathroom sink, charging in the kitchen overnight. He never

cared. Now it goes everywhere with him."

"Did you ever look at it?"

"No."

"Helena."

"I'm not going through my husband's phone, Cassidy."

"Your husband whose hand is on another woman's back in a photo that came up on the first

page of a Google search." Cassidy's voice was still controlled but only just. "That husband."

Helena didn't answer.

Cassidy pulled out her own phone. Opened the link Helena had sent. Set it on the table

between them like evidence.

They both looked at it.

"Camila Calloway," Cassidy read. "She's in finance. Moved back to Velmont eight weeks ago

after four years in New York." She scrolled. "She's connected to half the city on LinkedIn. Her

Instagram is mostly work events and travel and..." She stopped scrolling.

"What?"

Cassidy turned the phone around.

It was a different photo. Instagram this time, not the rooftop picture. Camila at some kind of

gallery opening, glass in hand, laughing at someone beside her. The caption said: good

people, good city, good to be home.

It was posted six weeks ago.

Six weeks ago was exactly when Damian had started getting quiet.Helena looked at the date for a long time.

"Hels." Cassidy's voice had changed. Gone softer. "What do you want to do?"

"I don't know yet."

"Do you want me to find out more about her?"

"How would you even do that?"

Cassidy gave her a look that said the question barely deserved an answer. "I know people. I

always know people." She picked up her coffee. "The question is what you want to do with

whatever I find."

Helena thought about last night. About the bedroom. About Damian saying "I'm happy" with

that half-second pause before it.

"Find out," she said.

Cassidy nodded once. Done. Decided. "And in the meantime you say nothing to him."

"I know."

"I mean it, Helena. You say nothing. You act normal. You keep cooking the chicken and

asking about his day and you give me seventy-two hours."

"Cassidy, I'm not going to..."

"Promise me."

Helena looked at her sister. At the set of her jaw and the steady eyes and the coffee she had

driven over with at eight-fifteen on a weekday without being asked.

"Fine," she said. "Seventy-two hours."

Cassidy raised her cup. "Good."

They drank their coffee in the quiet of the kitchen and didn't say anything for a while. Outside

a car passed. Somewhere down the street a dog was barking at something it would nevercatch.

"She's beautiful," Helena said finally.

Cassidy put her cup down. "Don't."

"I'm just saying."

"I know what you're doing and stop it." Her voice was firm. "What she looks like has nothing to

do with anything."

"It has something to do with how a person feels standing in their own kitchen."

Cassidy was quiet for a moment. Then she reached across the table and put her hand over

Helena's.

"You are the most beautiful woman in every room you walk into," she said. "And I'm not saying

that because I'm your sister. I'm saying it because it's true and Damian Graves is an idiot who

has apparently forgotten it." She squeezed once. "Don't let her face make you forget your

own."

Helena looked at her sister's hand on hers.

She nodded.

She did not say what she was actually thinking. What she was actually thinking was that

beautiful had nothing to do with it. What she was actually thinking was that the look on

Damian's face in that photo was not about beauty. It was about attention. About being

someone's entire focus. About mattering to a person in the room they were both standing in.

She couldn't remember the last time she had been Damian's entire focus.

She wasn't sure she ever had been.

She wasn't supposed to be downtown that afternoon.She had every intention of going straight home after her meeting at the Morrison account office ran long. She was tired and her head was full and all she wanted was the couch and something that didn't require her to perform being fine.

But Cassidy had texted her the name of a restaurant for lunch and Helena had gone because

saying no to Cassidy when she used that particular tone in a text was an energy she didn't

have today.

The restaurant was one of those places that was trying to be casual but wasn't. Exposed brick

and low lighting at noon and a menu that used words like artisanal without apology. Helena

found Cassidy at a corner table already halfway through a bread basket.

"You started without me."

"I'm stress eating on your behalf." Cassidy pushed the basket toward her. "Sit. I ordered you

the salmon."

Helena sat. Picked up a piece of bread. Looked around the restaurant the way you do when

you're somewhere new, cataloguing the room out of habit.

And stopped.

Three tables away, facing toward her, was a woman she would have recognized anywhere.

Even without the rooftop photo. Even without the LinkedIn profile and the Instagram and the

six-weeks-ago caption about being home. Even if she had never searched the name at all.

She would have recognized her because of the way Damian was sitting beside her.

He was leaning forward slightly, forearms on the table, coffee untouched, giving the woman

across from him the full undivided weight of everything he had. He was nodding at something

she was saying. And his face...

His face was doing the thing from the photo.

Open. Completely open. Not a version of himself. Just himself.

Helena felt the bread turn to nothing in her hand."Helena." Cassidy's voice came from somewhere far away. "Helena, look at me."

She looked at Cassidy.

Cassidy had gone very still. She had seen it too. Her eyes were moving between Helena's

face and the table three away with the controlled focus of someone trying to manage two

emergencies at once.

"Don't react," Cassidy said quietly, barely moving her lips. "Do not react right now."

Helena set the bread down.

She reached for her water. Took a sip. Set it down. Kept her face the way she had kept it last

night in the bedroom. Neutral. Present. Perfectly fine.

"Is that her?" she said. Not a question.

Cassidy glanced once. Looked back. "Yes."

Helena nodded slowly.

She looked at her water glass. At the condensation running down the side of it. At her own

hand on the table, still and quiet and giving nothing away.

Across the restaurant her husband laughed at something Camila Calloway said and reached

across the table and touched her hand.

Brief. Just fingertips. Just a second.

But Helena saw it.

She saw all of it.

"I need some air," she said.

"Helena..."

"I'm not going to do anything." She was already standing, picking up her bag with the steady

hands of a woman who had decided something and was keeping it. "I just need a minute."She walked toward the door without looking at Damian's table.

She almost made it.

She was four steps from the exit when she heard his voice.

"Helena?"

She stopped.

Turned around.

Damian was looking at her from his table. Surprise all over his face, genuine and unguarded.

And beside him, turning to follow his eyeline, was Camila Calloway, who looked at Helena

with an expression that was perfectly pleasant and completely unreadable.

The three of them looked at each other for the space of a breath.

Then Camila smiled.

And said, extending her hand toward Helena like they were meeting at a work function, like

this was nothing, like her hand hadn't been touched by Helena's husband twelve seconds

ago...

"You must be Helena. I've heard so much about you."