Chapter 3

The next morning, Owen went to the hospital.

Beatrice stayed at the apartment to sort through her things.

I worked in the living room while she kept going in and out of the study.

Half an hour later, she suddenly came over and sat down across from me, phone in hand.

"Elisa, Owen asked me if you've been having second thoughts about marrying him for a while now."

I looked up.

"I never said that."

Beatrice tapped a voice message.

My voice came through the speaker.

"He got called in again. Even when a light burns out at home, I can't get hold of him."

"Beatrice, sometimes I really don't know if I should marry him at all."

It was from six months ago.

That week, one of the kids in my class had broken his arm on the playground.

His parents had come to the school two days in a row, furious and looking for someone to blame.

By the time I got home, the kitchen light had burned out.

Owen was still in surgery.

I sat alone in the dark and sent Beatrice an eleven-minute voice message.

I'd been overwhelmed that night.

I'd vented all sorts of pessimistic things about my job, my life, and my relationship.

Now she played only the first thirteen seconds.

"Why did you send that to him?"

"I was trying to get him to pay more attention to you."

Beatrice looked genuinely worried.

"One of you thinks he didn't do anything wrong, and the other bottles everything up. If I don't push you two to talk, you're seriously going to break up."

My hand rested on my laptop.

For a long time, I didn't scroll to the next page of the document in front of me.

I couldn't begin to count all the things I'd confided in Beatrice over the past twelve years.

The sound of me crying in the stairwell during my parents' divorce.

How badly my hands shook the first time I stood in front of a classroom.

Every late-night voice message I'd sent her after Owen and I fought.

I'd never had my guard up around her.

And now thirteen seconds were enough to make Owen believe I'd been the one thinking about leaving first.

Worse, she acted like she was only trying to save us.

Her supposed good intentions were tearing my relationship with Owen apart.

I pushed her phone back toward her.

"Did you send him the other ten minutes too?"

Something flickered across Beatrice's face.

"I was upset. I didn't think that far ahead."

Owen came home that afternoon.

He set his phone on the table.

The voice message was still open on the screen.

"If you were feeling this way, you could've just told me."

"I did."

"You told me to take fewer night shifts and come home earlier. You never told me you were thinking about leaving me."

"I said that in a moment of emotional overload. Did you expect me to send a follow-up email to explain?"

Owen went quiet for a moment.

"I spend seven days with Beatrice and you call it betrayal. You think about leaving me and it's just 'venting.'"

I looked at Beatrice.

She was standing in the kitchen doorway.

Her eyes were already red.

"This is all my fault. Stop fighting. I'll move my stuff out right now."

Owen stopped her.

"You've got an early shift tomorrow. Don't make this harder than it needs to be."

Not once did he ask her why she'd played my private voice message for him.

Around dinnertime, Owen's mom called.

He kept his voice low out on the balcony, but I still caught one sentence.

"We're going to get the license. She's just upset right now."

After he hung up, he came back inside.

"Come home early tomorrow. I need to talk to you about something."

The next morning, he sent me a jewelry store pickup confirmation.

Underneath was a single message.

"Bring your ID home tonight."

I stared at it for a long time.

Eight years was a long time.

When I once had a high fever, Owen had run three blocks in his scrubs to get me medicine.

When my dad was diagnosed with diabetes, Owen printed out every page of his meal plan and went with him to follow-ups at the community clinic.

When Owen got his first residency bonus, he bought me the laptop I'd wanted but refused to replace for myself, and then lived on hospital cafeteria food for two straight months.

I wondered if maybe people could make one terrible mistake.

If he really understood what he'd done, maybe we could still sit down and actually talk.

I put my ID in my purse.

After work, I went back to the apartment.