CHAPTER 3- DISCARDED WIFE.

The porch light was on.

It was never on. Jack thought it wasted electricity.

There was a car in the driveway I didn't recognise. Low, black, expensive in a way that wasn't Jack's taste.

My phone was still in my hand, the unknown number still open on the screen.

You should be more careful about whom you trust. 

I put it away. Whoever sent it could wait.

I paid the driver with a hand that wasn't quite steady and let myself in through the side door — the one that didn't creak.

"Jack?"

Nothing.

"Jack, I'm home. I need to talk to you."

My own voice sounded far away, like it was coming from the next room instead of my own throat. The hallway was too long. It had never been this long before.

Then I heard it.

Laughter, upstairs. Low and easy. The kind you only make with someone you're comfortable with.

Georgina's laugh.

Everything else dropped out. The refrigerator hum. The clock on the wall. Just her laugh, looping, too loud, filling the whole staircase.

I told myself there was a version of this where it meant nothing. She'd stopped by. They were talking. She was telling him about my treatment, about the bill, about—

My hand was on the bannister, and I didn't remember putting it there.

I climbed. My legs didn't feel like mine. Each step took longer than it should have, like the house had added extra ones since this morning.

The bedroom door was open. Not all the way.

Enough.

I pushed it the rest of the way myself.

Jack's shirt was on the floor. Georgina's dress was beside it.

They broke apart when the door hit the wall, and the sound of it — wood against wood — was the loudest thing I'd ever heard in my life.

Then silence. Total. My heartbeat was the only sound left in the room, slamming somewhere behind my ears instead of in my chest where it belonged.

"Get off her."

I didn't remember crossing the room. One second I was in the doorway, the next Georgina's arm was in my hand, and I was pulling, and the walls were too close, tilting slightly, like the floor wasn't level anymore.

"Lauren—"

"Get out of my bed."

Jack sat up. Didn't reach for his shirt. Didn't reach for me.

"We need to talk," he said.

"Now you want to talk." My voice came out wrong. Too high. Not mine. I couldn't get a full breath, as the air in the room had thinned. "Now. While she's still in our bed."

"The marriage is over, Lauren."

"What?"

"It's over."

"You don't get to say that lying next to her."

"I'm saying it because it's true." He finally stood, finally reached for his shirt, and pulled it on like this was a meeting running long. "This isn't news to you. You've felt it too."

"I have cancer, Jack." Each word cost me air I didn't have. "I don't have time to feel anything except that."

"That's not my responsibility anymore."

"Not your—" My ears were ringing now, a thin, high whine underneath everything. "You stood in a church. You said in sickness and in health."

"Don't do that."

"Do what? Remind you of your own vows?"

I hit him. Open hand, full swing, and it connected before he caught my wrist.

"Let go of me."

"Lauren, stop—"

I wouldn't stop. I swung again with the other hand, and he caught that one too, and I pulled against him with everything I had left — which wasn't much, my breath coming in short, useless pulls that didn't fill anything.

"Georgina, help me."

She did.

Hands on my shoulders. Not gentle. Pushing me back until I was sitting on the floor instead of standing. The carpet burned against my palms.

I didn't remember falling.

"Stop it." She wasn't even breathing hard. "Just stop. You're embarrassing yourself."

"You were my best friend." My voice sounded like it was underwater.

"I was your babysitter. There's a difference." She straightened her dress and didn't look at me while she said it. "You've been sick for a year, Lauren. Everyone's allowed to be tired of it. You just don't get to be the only one who's exhausted."

"You knew. This whole time, you knew, and you sat in that hospital room and told me he still loved me."

"Because you needed to hear it."

"That's not the same as it being true."

Footsteps in the hall. Slow. Certain.

Beatrice stopped in the doorway and took in the whole scene — her son half-dressed, Georgina straightening her hem, me on the floor — without a single change in her face.

"So it's finally happening," she said.

"Beatrice." I got to my feet using the dresser, the room swaying slightly. "Please. Talk to him."

"Talk to him about what?"

"About this. About us."

"There is no us." She said it the way she'd correct a mispronounced word. "There hasn't been an us since you got sick and decided the Roland name owed you a free pass on being useful."

"That's not—"

"You married into this family. You didn't earn a place in it. And for four years you've taken and taken and given this family nothing but hospital bills and a husband too distracted to run his own company."

"I'm his wife."

"You're a liability." She turned to Jack. "End it tonight. Properly. Not the way you end things when you're afraid of your own decisions."

"Beatrice, please." My throat was closing. "I've done everything right. I married your son. I loved him. I got sick, that's all. I got sick, and none of you can forgive me for it."

"Forgive you?" Beatrice almost laughed. "You make it sound like an accusation. Nobody's punishing you for being sick, Lauren. We're simply done pretending it doesn't cost something."

"Jack." My voice broke on his name. "Please."

He looked at me for exactly one second.

Long enough that I almost believed something was still there.

Then he looked away.

— —

I don't remember all of what happened after that.

Beatrice's voice, giving instructions to someone I couldn't see, the words arriving in pieces, like a radio losing signal. My clothes coming off hangers I'd picked out myself. My medication bag the small one, was carried past me by a woman in a uniform who wouldn't meet my eyes.

I ended up outside. I don't remember walking there. The cold air hit my lungs wrong. Too sharp.

The door closed.

I heard the lock turn from the inside. A small, specific sound. Deliberate in a way that left no room for misunderstanding.

I stood on the steps with two bags at my feet and my ring still on my finger, and I waited because some stupid, stubborn part of me still believed a door could open again once it was closed.

It didn't.

No one came.

Not Jack. Not Georgina. Not one voice on the other side of that door saying Wait, come back; we made a mistake. 

Behind me, the porch light went off.

— WILLIAM —

The call came while I was reading a quarterly report I had already read twice.

"Mr Roland. St. Ambrose Hospital, billing office." The woman's voice was trained to stay calm, which meant something wasn't. "We have a flagged account under your family name. We weren't sure who to contact."

"Give me the name."

"Lauren Roland."

My daughter-in-law. Or  I checked the date; whatever she was to Jack now.

"What kind of flag?"

"Treatment was discontinued this afternoon. The account balance has been outstanding for six weeks. The emergency contact listed is Georgina Wesley, but she hasn't responded to our calls either."

Six weeks.

Jack had been at the club three nights this week. He had told me Lauren was "resting." He hadn't mentioned discontinued treatment. He hadn't mentioned an outstanding balance.

"What was she being treated for?"

A pause. The sound of a file opening. "I'm not authorised to discuss a patient's diagnosis, sir. But I can tell you she left the premises on foot this evening, and the attending physician flagged the discharge as against medical advice."

On foot. In November. From a hospital that had just stopped treating her.

"Send me everything I'm legally permitted to see." I closed the report. "And find out which of my family's cards stopped paying that bill six weeks ago."

"Sir?"

"Somebody made a decision." I stood and reached for my coat. "I want to know whose name was on it."