My Husband Abandoned Me to Save His Mistress’s Son

The bus station in New York smelled like burnt coffee and wet concrete. It was four in the morning. The fluorescent lights made everything look sick.

I stepped off onto the platform and felt the city swallow me whole. People moved past like water around a stone. Nobody looked. In Crestwood, everybody looked.

I had twelve dollars in my pocket. A bloody bandage on my arm. Jeans that smelled like smoke.

I walked six blocks before I found a payphone. My hands shook so hard I dropped the quarter twice. I punched in the number I'd known since I was six.

Mom picked up on the first ring.

"Mija?" Her voice cracked. "Edith, is that—"

"I'm home," I said. Then my knees went out.

*

I woke up in my childhood bedroom. The walls were still pale yellow. The bookshelf still held my high school yearbooks. The window overlooked the fire escape where I used to sit and read on summer nights before I knew what Montana was.

Mom sat in the chair by the bed. Her face was older than I remembered. Tired in a way that made my chest hurt.

"How long," I said.

She understood. "Three days. You had an infection. I called a friend from the hospital. She came here. No questions."

I looked at my arm. Clean white bandages. The kind that cost money.

"Edith." Mom's voice was soft. Careful. "You don't have to tell me. Not yet. Not ever, if you don't want. But you're safe now. You hear me? You're safe."

I tried to nod. My throat closed up instead.

She got up and sat on the edge of the mattress. She didn't hug me. She just put her hand over mine and stayed.

*

Garrett woke up in a hospital in Billings with his chest wrapped in gauze and a tube in his arm.

The nurse was blonde. Not Whitley blonde, but close enough that he stared too long.

"You're lucky," she said, checking the IV. "Boar got you good. Cracked two ribs. You'll be here a while."

"My wife," Garrett said. His voice came out rough. "Can you call her? Edith Wagner. She'll want to know."

The nurse glanced at his chart. "We tried the number you gave. No answer."

"Try again."

She did. Three times that day. Four the next. The phone in the farmhouse rang and rang into empty rooms.

Garrett told himself she was out. Shopping. Visiting Clara Jensen, maybe, or fixing a fence.

He told the nurses to keep the chair beside the bed clear. She'd come. She always came.

On the third day, he asked for his phone. His hands shook as he scrolled. He tried her mother's number. It rang twice, then went to voicemail. Marina's voice, warm and polite. He didn't leave a message.

By the fifth day, the nurses stopped asking if anyone was coming.

On the fourteenth day, a young nurse with kind eyes sat in the empty chair and said, "Mr. Wagner, is there anyone else we can call? A friend? A brother?"

Garrett stared at the ceiling tiles. He counted them. Thirty-two across. He'd counted them every day.

"No," he said.

The ache in his chest wasn't the ribs. He knew that now. It was something else. Something that had been there for months, maybe years, buried under easier things like want and convenience.

It was her. The way she used to set his coffee down without a word. The way she'd hum while folding laundry. The way she'd looked at him the morning after their fake wedding, like he'd hung the damn sky.

He'd called it suffocating once. He'd called it boring.

Now, lying alone in a hospital bed two weeks deep, he finally had a name for it.

Love.

And she was gone.

*

Whitley stood in the kitchen and stared at the sink. It was full. Had been full for three days.

Her hands were cracked across the knuckles. Two nails had broken off at the quick. There was dirt under the rest that wouldn't come out no matter how hard she scrubbed.

The fence on the south pasture had come down in a windstorm. She'd spent four hours trying to fix it and gotten nowhere. The posts wouldn't go in straight. The wire kept snapping back and slicing her palms.

Devon sat at the table, eating cereal dry because the milk had gone bad. He didn't ask where Edith was anymore. He'd stopped asking after the first week.

Whitley's hair hung in greasy strings. She couldn't remember the last time she'd washed it. The magazines under her bed were still there, but she didn't open them. She was too tired. Her back hurt. Her shoulders hurt. Everything hurt.

She looked at her reflection in the window above the sink. The woman looking back was older. Harder. Used up.

She used to be beautiful.

She turned away and started on the dishes. The water was cold. She didn't bother heating it.

Behind her, Devon scraped his spoon against the bowl. The sound echoed in the big empty house.

Outside, the wheat turned brown under a sky the color of old coins.