After My Husband Abandoned Me to the Wolves

Dexter insisted Rowan join us at the campfire.

"Neighbors in the middle of nowhere," he said, holding out a folding chair like it was a throne. "We should be civilized."

Rowan sat. He didn't look at me. He didn't need to. I felt him across the fire like a second pulse.

Emberlynn poured whiskey into tin cups. She handed one to Rowan with both hands, the way she used to hand me thank-you notes. "Mr. Armstrong, right? Conservation work?"

"Rowan." His voice was low. Even. "And yes."

"That's amazing. Truly." She tilted her head. "You must see incredible things out here."

"I see what's in front of me."

His eyes stayed on the fire. Emberlynn's smile flickered for half a second before she reset it.

Dexter launched into a monologue about the Montana light, the way it hit the granite at dusk, the challenge of capturing it in oil. He used words like luminous and unforgiving. He glanced at me twice to check if I was listening. I wasn't. I was watching my breath cloud in the cold air.

The temperature dropped fast. I felt it move up my spine before I felt it on my skin.

Rowan stood. He shrugged out of his jacket in one clean motion and draped it over my shoulders. No word. No look. He sat back down and picked up his cup like nothing had happened.

The jacket was warm from his body. It smelled like pine smoke and something clean underneath.

Dexter's jaw tightened. He noticed. Emberlynn noticed him notice.

"Calliope, honey." Dexter's voice was soft. Careful. "I brought your fleece. It's in the tent."

"I'm fine."

"You should really—"

"I said I'm fine."

He held my eyes for a moment. Then he stood, brushed his hands on his jeans, and turned to Emberlynn.

"Come look at the reference shots I took today. I want your eye on the composition."

She rose immediately. Trained. They walked to the SUV, Dexter's hand at the small of her back, and I watched him pretend not to look over his shoulder to see if I was watching.

I wasn't. I was looking at Rowan.

He leaned forward. Elbows on his knees. He kept his eyes on the fire when he spoke, and his voice was so quiet I felt it more than heard it.

"You deserve so much more than this."

I didn't answer. I couldn't. Ten years of things I never said sat in my throat like a stone.

He didn't need me to answer. He just sat there beside me, and for the first time since Seattle, I felt the muscle between my shoulder blades unclench.

Dexter came back sooner than he should have. Emberlynn trailed behind him, her braid loosened, her cheeks pink from something that wasn't the cold.

He stopped at the edge of the firelight. He looked at me in Rowan's jacket. He looked at Rowan, sitting close, not touching, not needing to.

And I saw it.

Not heartbreak. Not love. Something smaller and uglier — the look of a man who suddenly realizes his audience has stood up and walked out of the theater.

He smiled. Wide. "Getting late. Big day tomorrow."

Rowan rose slowly. He nodded to Dexter, to Emberlynn, and finally — briefly — to me. Then he walked back to his own camp, leaving the jacket on my shoulders.

I wore it to bed.

Dexter didn't say a word about it.

---

Morning came gray and sharp. I boiled water on the camp stove and drank instant coffee that tasted like burnt paper.

Emberlynn appeared beside me in an oversized flannel — Dexter's flannel — with the sleeves rolled up to show her wrists. She reached across me for the coffee pot. Her hip brushed mine.

"Sorry, Calliope. Cramped out here, isn't it?"

"Mm."

She laughed at something Dexter said from across the clearing. Too loud. Her head thrown back. Her eyes on me the whole time.

I sipped my coffee. I did not blink.

When she leaned over Dexter's shoulder to point at something on his phone, her braid fell against his neck. He didn't move it. She didn't move it. She was waiting for me to react.

I wrote in my journal instead. Time. Position. Physical contact — hair, neck, forty-two seconds.

When I looked up, her smile had gone thin at the corners. She had learned something she didn't like. Her eyes moved past me to Rowan's camp in the distance, then back to me.

She knew.

Good, I thought. Let her know.

---

That afternoon, Dexter carried his easel down to the river.

Golden hour hit the water like liquid brass. He set up in full view of the clearing. He arranged Emberlynn on a flat rock, tilted her chin, pushed a strand of hair behind her ear with a tenderness that was meant to be seen.

He painted her for two hours.

I watched from the ridge above camp with my journal open on my knee.

5:47 PM. D. adjusts E.'s posture. Hand on jaw. Six seconds.

6:03 PM. E. laughs. D. leans in. Kisses her temple.

6:19 PM. D. looks up toward camp. Scans for me. Does not find me.

He kept looking up. Every few minutes. Waiting for the confrontation. Waiting for the tears, the raised voice, the wife who would come stumbling down the slope so he could turn to Emberlynn and say, See what I have to live with?

I closed my journal.

I walked back to my tent, ducked inside, and zipped it shut.

From the river, I heard his voice rise once — a laugh, forced, aimed at the empty ridge.

He was painting for no one now.

I lay back on my sleeping bag and pulled Rowan's jacket over me like a blanket. It still smelled like pine smoke.

I closed my eyes and, for the first time in a very long time, I smiled.