Chapter 1

I smelled it before I even opened the door.

Not perfume exactly, more like something sweet and wrong mixed together, the kind of smell that makes your stomach drop before your brain catches up.

I had my keys in my hand and my work bag on my shoulder, and I was thinking about what to cook for dinner, and then the smell hit me, and I just stood there in the hallway like an idiot.

I told myself it was overthinking. I told myself a lot of things in those three seconds before I pushed the door open.

The apartment was dim. I hadn’t left it that way. I always leave the kitchen light on because Marcus said it helps with the electric bill, but I still do it anyway because I hate coming home to dark rooms.

The kitchen light was off.

Everything was off.

I heard them before I saw them.

"Hmmm, ohhh… baby," a female voice said from the room. "You are so good… Yeah, right there."

"You like that," a voice that sounded like Marcus said with a tone I had never heard from him before.

Maybe I am just overthinking this issue, and my ears are playing a prank on me, and it’s not even him but someone else.

I pushed the bedroom door, and it swung open too easily, like even the door wanted me to see.

Marcus.

It was really him.

Two years of being with Marcus. His birthday is coming up next month; I already bought the watch. But here he is, on our bed, in our apartment, the apartment that I paid for because he was between jobs and I said it was fine; I can handle it, and instead he is here fucking someone in it.

The girl grabbed the sheet.

He grabbed nothing.

He just looked at me with this face like he was surprised but not sorry, like he was caught but not ashamed, and that look, that specific look, did something to me that shattered whatever hope I had of us.

"Zara."

He said my name like I was the problem.

I didn’t scream.

I thought I would.

I had always imagined that if something like this ever happened to me, I would be the kind of woman who throws things, who says sharp words, who burns the whole situation down with her voice.

I just stood there.

My bag slipped off my shoulder and hit the floor, and I didn’t pick it up.

"It’s not...." he started.

"Don’t."

I said it quietly, and that scared me more than anything else.

How quiet I was.

I picked up my bag.

I walked back out.

I sat on the hallway floor outside my own apartment, the apartment with my name on the lease, and I sat there for a long time.

I could hear movement inside.

Voices.

Low and urgent.

At some point I heard the front door open and close, and I knew the girl was gone, and then Marcus opened the door and found me still sitting on the floor.

He crouched down in front of me and started talking.

I watched his mouth move.

I heard sounds coming out.

Something about loneliness, and I wasn’t present, and this hadn’t been working for a while.

I caught words here and there like I was listening to a badly tuned radio.

"Are you hearing me?" he said.

"You need to leave," I said. "Tonight."

"Zara, this is a conversation we need to...."

"I pay for this apartment, Marcus. You need to leave tonight."

He left.

Not immediately; there was more talking, more words I didn’t fully absorb, but eventually he packed a bag and left.

I locked the door and sat on the kitchen floor because I couldn’t make myself go into the bedroom.

I called Priya at some point.

I don’t remember deciding to call her; my phone was just at my ear, and it was ringing.

"He was fucking someone in the apartment," I said when she picked up.

Silence.

Then, "I’m coming over."

She arrived in twenty minutes with wine she didn’t open and food I didn’t eat, and she sat on the kitchen floor with me without asking why we were on the floor.

That’s the thing about Priya.

She just locates where you are, and she goes there.

We sat there a long time.

"You need to get out of this city for a bit," she said eventually.

"I can’t just leave."

"You literally can. Come home with me. Come to Wrenfield."

She said it like it was already decided, like the conversation was just a formality.

"Two weeks. Fresh air. Different walls. You need to not be here right now, Zara."

I looked around the kitchen.

My kitchen.

The dish towels I picked.

The magnets on the fridge from places we traveled.

All of it suddenly felt like evidence.

"I have work," I said.

"So take leave. When’s the last time you actually took leave?"

She had me there.

"Wrenfield," I repeated.

I’d heard her mention it before, the small town she grew up in, the one she always described as quiet and close and complicated in ways she never fully explained.

"It’ll be good," she said. "I promise."

I looked at the bedroom door, still closed, and the thought of sleeping in that bed tonight made me want to throw up.

"Okay," I said.

"Okay, fine."