All Chapters of The wife I forgot to love: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

160 Chapters

CHAPTER ONE — The Night He Stopped Making Coffee

Helena heard his key in the door at seven forty-three.She didn’t check the time on purpose. She just knew because the chicken had been resting for exactly thirteen minutes and Damian was never home before the thirteen minute mark. Not anymore.She called out from the kitchen. “Dinner’s ready.”No answer.She heard him drop his keys on the table by the door. Heard the particular silence of a man doing something with his phone before he did anything else.She plated the food.He appeared in the kitchen doorway still in his coat, phone in hand, eyes finishing a message before they found her. “Hey.”“Hey yourself.” She nodded at his plate. “Sit. It’s going to get cold.”“Two seconds.” He typed something. Set the phone face down on the counter and finally took off his coat. Came to the table and sat across from her.Helena looked at her husband. At the jaw she knew and the eyes that were present now but had been somewhere else four seconds ago. She picked up her fork.“Long day?” she aske

CHAPTER TWO - His Hand On Her Back

Helena could not stop looking at the photo.She knew she should put the phone down. She knew standing in her own kitchen at eight in the evening staring at a stranger's face on a screen was not going to change anything or explain anything or make the tightness in her chest go anywhere useful.She looked anyway.Camila Calloway was the kind of beautiful that didn't need to try. Not the kind that came from effort and early mornings and the right lighting. The kind that just existed, easy and uncomplicated, like it had never once been a question. Dark hair. Strong face. The relaxed posture of a woman completely comfortable in whatever room she walked into.And Damian...Helena zoomed in slowly on his face.She had been looking at that face across a dinner table for two years. She knew every version of it. The distracted one he wore when work was loud in his head. The tired one that settled in around the eyes on Thursday nights. The almost-smile he gave her when she said something that ca

CHAPTER THREE - You Must Be Helena

Cassidy was already at the kitchen table when Helena came downstairs, two coffees placed with the precision of a woman who had done this before. Who had sat at this table before in exactly this kind of morning.She looked up when Helena walked in.She didn't say anything right away. Just looked at her sister the way only Cassidy could, like she was taking inventory of every single thing Helena was holding together and calculating what was about to fall."Sit down," Cassidy said.Helena sat.Cassidy pushed one of the coffees across the table. "Talk to me. All of it. From the beginning.""I already told you on the phone.""You told me about a photo. I want to know about before the photo." Cassidy wrapped both hands around her own cup. "How long has something felt off?"Helena looked at her coffee."Three weeks," she said. "Maybe four.""What kind of off?""Just..." She stopped. Tried to find the right word and kept finding the wrong ones. "Quiet. He got quiet in a different way. Damian

CHAPTER FOUR — Perfectly Fine

Helena shook her hand.That was the thing she would think about later. Lying in the dark. Replaying it. Of all the things she could have done in that moment, she shook Camila Calloway’s hand like they were meeting at a networking event and everything was perfectly fine.“Helena.” She said her own name back like a confirmation. Kept her voice even. Kept her face even. Kept everything even. “Nice to meet you.”Camila’s hand was warm. Firm handshake. The kind that said she’d introduced herself to a lot of important people and knew exactly how to do it. She held the shake one second longer than necessary and then let go.“I’ve been hoping we’d run into each other,” Camila said. “Damian talks about you.”Helena looked at her husband.Damian had stood up from the table. He was doing that thing where his face was very still and very careful, which on another day she might have mistaken for calm. She knew better now. That stillness was him calculating. Figuring out what this moment needed fro

CHAPTER FIVE — Seventy Two Hours

Cassidy called at seven the next morning.Helena was already awake. She’d been awake since four, lying on her side of the bed listening to Damian breathe and thinking about the word *reconnecting* and what it was doing in her marriage.She picked up before the second ring. “Talk.”“Good morning to you too.” Cassidy’s voice was alert in the way of someone who had also not slept particularly well. “I found things.”Helena sat up slowly. Damian shifted beside her. She slid out of bed and walked to the bathroom, closing the door quietly behind her.“How much things,” she said.“Enough.” A pause. “You sure you want to do this right now? Before coffee?”“Cassidy.”“Okay. Okay.” The sound of paper. Or maybe a keyboard. “Camila Calloway. Thirty one years old. Finance director at Vantage Group downtown. Moved back to Velmont eight weeks ago from New York where she worked at a firm called Aldridge Capital for four years.” Another pause. “Before New York she was here. In Velmont. For three years

CHAPTER SIX, She Called Me

Cassidy went silent for exactly one second. Then she said a word. One word. The kind that came from a place so deep and so furious that Helena had never once heard it leave her sister's mouth in thirty years. It landed in Helena's ear and somehow that single word, more than the phone call and the rooftop photo and the hand across the restaurant table, was the thing that finally made Helena's eyes sting. "I know," Helena said quietly. "She went into his phone," Cassidy said. Her voice had gone to that flat, dangerous place. "She went into your husband's phone, found your number and called you. At work. To tell you about their history." "Yes." "And she said it like she was doing you a favor." "Yes." A long pause. Helena could hear Cassidy breathing on the other end. "What are you going to do?" Cassidy asked. "I'm going home," Helena said. "And I'm going to talk to my husband." "Helena, " "Not to fall apart. Not to beg." Her voice was very steady. "I'm going to look him in the

CHAPTER SEVEN, Sunday

He came back on Thursday with his answer. Helena was in the kitchen making tea, not dinner. She had stopped making dinner three days ago. She had not announced this. She had just stopped. He stood in the doorway and looked at her and she looked back and neither of them said anything for a moment because they both already knew. I think we should end the marriage. He said. Okay. She said. That was all. She did not ask him to explain. She did not cry. She picked up her tea and told him she would be out by Sunday and went upstairs and sat on the edge of their bed and listened to his footsteps going to the guest room and then she let herself cry. Quietly. Quickly. Just enough to get it out. Then she called Cassidy. He said it. Helena said when Cassidy picked up. One second of silence. Then. I am already in the car. Cassidy arrived in fourteen minutes with nothing. No food. No wine. She just sat on the bed next to Helena and held her hand and said nothing for a long time. W

CHAPTER EIGHT, The Papers

The lawyer's office was on the fourteenth floor of a building downtown that looked like it had been designed to make people feel small. Helena arrived five minutes early. She sat in the waiting area with her coat in her lap and her back straight and her hands folded and she looked at the city through the floor to ceiling window and thought about nothing in particular. That was something she had learned in the last few days. How to think about nothing. It was harder than it sounded but she was getting better at it. Damian arrived two minutes later. He saw her the moment he walked in. She watched him adjust. Watched him decide what his face was going to do. He chose neutral. She respected that. Helena. He said. Damian. She said. They sat on opposite sides of the waiting area until the lawyer called them in. The room was the kind of quiet that had carpet and heavy furniture and no windows. The lawyer said things. Helena listened and said yes in the right places and kept her

CHAPTER NINE, Something New

Helena woke up at seven and lay still for a moment. She was waiting for the weight. The particular heaviness that had been sitting on her chest every morning for the past two weeks. The first thought being Damian. The first feeling being loss. The first few seconds of every day being the worst few seconds because they were the ones where everything came back. She waited. It did not come. She sat up slowly. Looked around the neutral apartment in the morning light. At the good knife on the counter. At the Christmas photo on the windowsill. At the jar of rosemary she had set next to it because it deserved to be somewhere it could be seen. Something was different this morning. She was not happy. She was not healed. She was not any of the things people meant when they said you would be fine. But she was awake and she was sitting up and the first thing she had thought about was not Damian Graves. It was the text she had not answered. And the smile she had gone to sleep with. She mad

CHAPTER TEN, Marcus

Helena picked up on the fourth ring.She almost did not."Helena." A pause. Like he was relieved she answered and nervous about it at the same time. "It is Marcus. Damian's Marcus. I know. I know this is weird. Just." Another pause. "Please don't hang up."Cassidy had gone very still across the counter.Helena turned toward the window. "Marcus.""Yeah." He exhaled. "Hi. I have been sitting with my phone for about forty minutes trying to figure out how to start this and I still do not have a good answer so I am just going to say it." A beat. "I am sorry, Helena. For not calling sooner. For staying quiet through all of it. I kept telling myself it was not my place and I think I was just being a coward."Helena said nothing."I watched what happened," Marcus said. "I was right there. I saw how he was treating you those last few months and I did not say anything to him the way I should have and I definitely did not say anything to you and that was wrong." His voice was genuine. A little r

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