Chapter 4

Elena’s pov

I woke to the sound of the old coffee maker in the kitchen and the low scrape of a chair against the floor. For a few seconds I didn’t remember where I was. The ceiling was the wrong color. 

The mattress felt too narrow. Then the night before came back in one clean, heavy piece and I turned my face into the pillow.

I was in my old bedroom at Mom’s apartment.

I had left the hotel just after first light. I couldn’t stay in that impersonal room any longer. 

I had called her from the sidewalk, voice flat, and she had only said, “Come home.” She didn’t ask questions on the phone. She just stayed on the line until I got into the cab.

Now the morning was fully here, and so was the reality I had been trying not to look at.

I sat up slowly. My body felt sore in a way that had nothing to do with sleep. 

The jeans and sweater from last night were still on me. I hadn’t bothered changing again.

A soft knock sounded at the door.

“Elena?” Mom’s voice was quiet. “I’m coming in.”

She opened the door and stood there with two mugs. She looked like she hadn’t slept much either. 

She crossed the room, set one mug on the nightstand, and sat on the edge of the bed the way she used to when I was younger.

“Drink some,” she said.

I took the mug. The heat against my palms felt like the only solid thing in the room.

“I don’t know what to say first,” I told her.

“You don’t have to say anything yet. There’s no right order for this.”

“He told me to leave. On our wedding night. He had papers. A folder. He said I lied about never being with anyone. He wouldn’t listen. He just decided.”

Mom’s jaw tightened, but her voice stayed steady. “I know. You told me that much last night. You don’t need to go through every word again if you’re not ready.”

“I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready.” I stared down at the coffee. “A few hours before that he was calling me his wife and talking about ordinary mornings. 

He said he wanted arguments about nothing important and then making up. 

Then someone handed him a folder and everything was over. Like the rest of it had never happened.”

She reached over and covered my hand with hers. “Did he show you what was in it?”

“No. He just told me what he believed it proved. Hotel footage. Some clinics form. Messages. I kept saying it wasn’t true. That I’ve never been with anyone. He looked at me like I was already finished explaining. Like he had already closed the file on me.”

Mom was quiet for a moment. “And then he told you to leave.”

“Yes. He said the marriage was over. That the lawyers would handle it in the morning. He had a car waiting downstairs. Twenty minutes. That was all the time he gave me.”

I heard the small sound she made in the back of her throat, the one she made when she was holding back something sharper.

“I took the rings off before I left,” I said. “I left them on the table beside the folder. I couldn’t keep them on. Looking at them made it worse.”

“That was the right thing,” she said. “You don’t owe those rings anything. You don’t owe him the performance of still wearing them.”

We sat in silence for a while. The apartment felt the same as it always had, small, familiar, a little worn, but I felt like a different person sitting inside it. 

The version of me who had walked down the aisle yesterday morning seemed far away, like someone I had only read about.

My phone buzzed on the nightstand. I flinched before I could stop myself. Mom glanced at the screen.

“It’s not him,” she said. “It’s an email. Looks like a law firm.”

I picked up the phone. The subject line was short and formal. Something about the dissolution of marriage and next steps. 

The timestamp was from early this morning. He hadn’t wasted any time.

I set the phone back down without opening it.

“They’re already moving,” I said. “He had the lawyers ready before I even left the building.”

“I see that.”

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do next. I don’t even know what the first step is supposed to feel like.”

Mom took a slow breath. “Right now you drink the coffee. Then you shower. Then you eat something even if you don’t want it. After that we can look at the email together if you want. Or we can ignore it for another hour. You’re allowed to take this in pieces. You don’t have to solve the whole thing before breakfast.”

I nodded, but the motion felt disconnected from the rest of me.

“I keep replaying the part where he told me I had humiliated myself by lying,” I said. “I didn’t lie. I need someone to believe that. I need it said out loud by someone who isn’t me.”

“I believe you.” Her voice was firm. “I’ve always believed you. That doesn’t change because a man with money and a folder decided otherwise. His certainty doesn’t get to rewrite what you know about yourself.”

The words landed somewhere deep and sore. I blinked hard and looked away.

“I don’t know how to be this person,” I said. “The one who got married and divorced the same night. It doesn’t feel real. 

It feels like I accidentally stepped into someone else’s life and now I can’t get back.”

“It doesn’t have to feel real yet,” Mom said. “It just has to be gotten through. One hour at a time if that’s all you can manage. You don’t have to understand it today. You only have to survive it.”

I set the mug down and pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes. The pressure helped a little.

“I’m going to shower,” I said finally.

“I’ll be in the kitchen.” She stood, then paused at the door. “Elena. You’re still you. He doesn’t get to take that. No folder gets to take that.”

I didn’t answer. I wasn’t sure I believed her yet.

After she left I stayed on the bed a little longer, staring at the email notification still lighting up my phone. The legal machinery was already turning. 

The marriage that had started the day before was already being taken apart by people who had never even met me.

I stood up, gathered clean clothes from the drawer I still kept here, and walked toward the bathroom. 

The apartment was quiet except for the distant sound of Mom moving around the kitchen. 

I closed the bathroom door and leaned against it for a moment, eyes shut.

Yesterday I was a bride.

This morning I was sitting in my childhood bedroom while lawyers prepared papers to undo it.