The cab dropped me at the front entrance. I stood on the sidewalk with my discharge papers folded in my coat pocket and my overnight bag hanging from one shoulder. The doorman nodded like I'd only been gone for the weekend. Like I hadn't left here bleeding five weeks ago.
I took the elevator up. Watched the numbers climb. Thirty-one. Thirty-two. The doors opened onto the penthouse foyer, and I smelled it before I saw anything else — perfume. Not mine. Something sweeter, heavier, the kind that clung to fabric and announced itself in every room.
I set my bag down by the door. My keys were still in my hand, but they felt wrong now, like I'd used them to break into someone else's home instead of my own.
The living room looked the same. Same furniture. Same view of the city through floor-to-ceiling windows. Same white orchids in a vase on the console table, probably left over from some event I hadn't been invited to while I was learning to walk again without getting dizzy.
Then I heard the laugh. Light, easy, coming from the direction of the bedroom. My bedroom.
I walked down the hall. My legs still felt unsteady, like the floor wasn't quite level, but I made it to the doorway and stopped.
Kylee Boyd stood at my vanity in a silk robe I didn't recognize, brushing her hair with my brush. My jewelry box sat open beside her. She'd tried on my earrings — the pearl drops Dominick gave me on our first anniversary — and left them on the counter when she decided they didn't suit her.
She saw me in the mirror before she turned around. Her smile came easy, practiced, like she'd been rehearsing it.
"Clara." She said my name the way you'd say it to a guest who'd overstayed their welcome. "You're back."
I looked past her. The bed was unmade. His side and mine. Except it wasn't mine anymore. The sheets were different. The pillows were different. Even the lighting looked softer, like someone had changed the bulbs to something warmer, more flattering.
"I kept your side of the closet warm," Kylee said. She gestured toward the walk-in with one hand, nails painted red, still holding my hairbrush in the other. "Most of it, anyway. Some of your things were so outdated, Clara. I had them donated. You don't mind, do you?"
I stood there with my bag cutting into my shoulder and my discharge papers still folded in my pocket. I had no words for this. No script. Five years of marriage had taught me how to apologize for things I hadn't done, how to smooth over Dominick's moods, how to smile through charity luncheons and board dinners. But no one had ever taught me what to say when another woman redecorated your bedroom and asked if you minded.
So I said nothing.
Kylee's smile faltered. Just for a second. She'd been expecting something — tears, maybe, or anger, some kind of reaction she could use later when she told Dominick how cruel I'd been to her. But I just stood there, and that seemed to unsettle her more than anything I could have said.
"Dominick's at the office," she offered finally, setting the brush down. "He'll be back for dinner. I'm making his favorite."
His favorite. Like she'd lived here long enough to know what that was. Like I hadn't spent five years learning which dishes he preferred, which wines, which version of myself he'd tolerate at the end of a long day.
I turned and walked back down the hall. Left my bag by the door. Sat on the couch in the living room and stared at the city lights coming on outside, one by one, like stars that had fallen and gotten stuck in glass towers.
I heard Kylee moving around in the bedroom. Drawers opening. Closet doors sliding. She was humming something. I didn't recognize the tune.
I put my hand on my stomach. Still flat. Still empty. The cramping had finally stopped two days ago, but the hollowness hadn't. I didn't think it ever would.
Dominick came home at eight. I heard his keys in the door, his shoes on the marble, his voice calling out, "Kylee?" Not my name. Hers.
She appeared from the bedroom in a dress I used to own, one I'd bought for a gala last spring and never got to wear because Dominick said the neckline was too low. It looked different on her. Everything did.
He kissed her. Right there in the foyer, ten feet from where I sat on the couch. His hand on her waist. Her laugh against his mouth. Neither of them looked toward the living room. Neither of them checked to see if I was there.
I watched them the way you'd watch actors in a play. Distant. Clinical. Like it was happening to someone else.
When they finally noticed me, Dominick's expression didn't change. No guilt. No surprise. Just a flicker of irritation, like I was a piece of furniture left in the wrong place.
"You're back," he said. Same words Kylee had used. Same flat tone.
"I live here," I said quietly.
He looked at me for a long moment. Then he looked at Kylee, and something passed between them, some silent agreement I wasn't part of.
"We need to talk," he said. "Tomorrow. About the video. About the hospital. About your behavior."
My behavior. Not his. Not the fact that I'd lost a baby on a frozen overpass while he was in bed with the woman now wearing my dress. My behavior.
I nodded. I'd learned that too. When to fight and when to just let the words wash over you like cold water, numbing everything until you couldn't feel it anymore.
They went into the bedroom. My bedroom. The door closed. I heard the lock click.
I sat on the couch until the city lights blurred together and my legs went numb and the sky outside turned from black to gray. Somewhere around dawn, I fell asleep sitting up, and I dreamed of snow falling on an empty highway, covering everything, making it clean and white and silent.
When I woke up, Kylee was making coffee in my kitchen, and Dominick was on the phone in his study, and I understood with perfect, terrible clarity that this was my life now.
At least until I figured out how to make it something else.
