Stay Away From My Daughter

It would be dishonest to say Sera was fine.

She wasn’t.

She had spent the night on the edge of the bed she had shared with Elliot for four years, staring at the wall across from her. She hadn’t cried. She had simply sat there, turning that phone over and over in her mind like a stone she couldn’t put down. 

Are you my daddy’s wife?

Five words. A child’s voice. Soft and concerning and completely innocent of the damage it had caused.

Sera pressed her palm flat against her chest, as if that could hold the ache in place.

She had no one to call. No mother to dial at midnight. No Sister to come over and make tea and sit beside her without needing to say anything.

She was alone in this house and the way she had always been alone in this house. Completely, quietly, invisible alone.

But she had made a decision.

Sixty days.

She had asked for sixty days and she would not waste a single one of them drowning. She would use everyone. She would leave this marriage the way she had lived inside it. With her head up. With her name clean. With the truth finally, fully out in the open. That was what she told herself as she stood in front of the mirror the next morning.

She had washed her face carefully. Pulled her hair back softly.

She wore a cream colored dress she had bought on her own, with her own money, before she ever became Sera Voss. It was simple. It suited her.

She looked at her reflection for a long time.

You are still here, she told herself. And that counts for something.

She went downstairs to make breakfast. She had just cracked the second egg when she heard the front door open.

Not Elliot. He had already left. She had his car pull out before seven.

She turned.

The woman who walked into the kitchen moved like she owned every room she had ever entered. Long legs. Designer coat.

Dark hair that fell in perfect waves over one shoulder. She looked around the kitchen slowly, the way a person does when they want you to know they are unimpressed.

Sera recognized her immediately.

Nicole Harte.

She had seen the name in Elliot’s phone once, a long time ago, when she had still been naïve enough to look and naïve enough to feel something when she found it. She had seen the face in the photo where she was never meant to find. She had had the voice on the other end of a phone call that Elliot had walked away to take.

And now she was standing in Sera’s kitchen. Uninvited. Perfectly composed. Looking at Sera the way, someone looks at furniture they are already planning to throw out.

“You must be Sera,” she said. Her voice was pleasant. That was somehow the worst part.

Sera set spatula down. “You must be Nicole.”

Something shifted in Nicole’s expression. She hadn’t expected that. She had probably expected tears. Or trembling. Or the wife, lost eyes of a woman who didn’t already know.

“Elliot told me about the sixty days,” Nicole said, moving further into the kitchen, her fingers trailing lightly how long the counter. “ I have to say, I found it interesting. The whole thing.”

“ I am sure you did.”

“It's a little desperate, don’t you think? She tilted her head. Her smile was careful. Controlled. “Fighting for a man who has already chosen someone else, what exactly are you hoping to accomplish?”

Sera looked at her directly. “I’m  not fighting for him.”

“Then what are you doing?”

“Making breakfast,” Sera said simply. She turned back to the stove. 

A short silence .

Then Nicole laughed. It was a light sound. Pretty, almost. But there was something underneath it that wasn’t pretty at all.

“You know,” she said slowly, “ I used to feel sorry for you. I did. I told myself you probably had no idea. That you were just some woman Elliot had married for complicated reasons and that’s none of it was your fault.” She paused. “But you’ve known for a while now, haven’t you? And you’re still here. That’s not sad anymore, Sera. That’s just embarrassing.”

Sera’s hand tightened around the handle of the pan.

She breathed in once.

Then out.

“My daughter asked me something yesterday,” Sera said quietly. 

She kept her back to Nicole. She kept her voice even. “She called me. Your daughter. She asked me if I was her daddy‘s wife.”

Complete silence behind her.

“I told her yes.” Sera turned the egg carefully. “Because I am. For sixty more days, I am. And I will not apologize for that to you or to anyone else in this family.”

She had Nicole take a breath. Sharp. Just barely controlled.

“ you spoke to her?” The pleasantness was gone from her voice now. Every last trace of it. “You stay away from my daughter. Do you understand me? She has nothing to do with you.”

“She called me,” Sera said calmly. “I didn’t go looking.”

“ I don’t care who called who.” Nicole stepped forward. “Stay away from her. She doesn’t need to know you exist.”

Sera placed the finished egg on a plate. She said the pan down gently. She turned around and looked at the woman in front of her. The woman Elliot had chosen. The woman who had a child with her husband while she was still his wife.

She looked at her for a long moment.

“She already knows I exist,” Sera said softly. “She’s the one who found me.”

The room went very still.

And then the sound of a key in the front door. 

Elliot.

His footsteps crossed the hallway. He appeared in the kitchen doorway, briefcase still in his hand and stopped. 

His eyes moved from Nicole to Sera and back again.

And in that single second, standing between the two women whose lives he had tangled together without a word of warning to either of them, something crossed his face that Sera had never seen there before. 

It wasn’t anger.

It wasn’t coldness.

It looked like shame. 

Almost.

“Nicole,” he said carefully. “What are you doing here?”

Nicole looked at him. Her jaw was tight. Her eyes were bright in a way that had nothing to do with once.

“Ask your wife,” she said. “She has something to tell you.”