The wife I forgot to love

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 caught him off guard.

The face in this photo was none of those.

It was open. Just open. The way a person looks when they have stopped managing

themselves, stopped holding anything back, stopped being somewhere else in their own

head. He was looking at Camila Calloway and every single part of him was present for it.

Helena couldn't remember the last time he had looked at her that way.She turned the screen off.

She stood in the quiet of her kitchen with the dish towel folded the way she always folded it

and the leftover chicken wrapped in the fridge and the sound of Damian upstairs moving

around their bedroom like it was just another evening.

Her hands were steady.

She noticed that. Her hands were completely steady.

She put the phone in her pocket and climbed the stairs.

Damian was in bed already, sitting up against the headboard with his tablet, reading

something. He glanced over when she came in. "Thought you were right behind me."

"I was cleaning up." She went to her side of the bed. Started taking off her earrings. Set them

on the nightstand one at a time.

"You don't have to do that tonight. I would have helped."

"It's done now."

She sat on the edge of the bed with her back to him and took a slow breath that she made

sure didn't sound like anything.

"There's that thing at Harmon's firm on Friday," Damian said behind her. "Dinner. You don't

have to come if you don't want to."

"Do you want me there?"

A pause. Not long. Just enough.

"Of course," he said.

She turned around and looked at him. Her husband with his tablet and his tired eyes and his

face that had been open and fully present for someone else tonight while she had been

downstairs making chicken and folding dish towels.

"I'll come," she said.He nodded. Looked back at the tablet. "How's your sister?"

"Fine."

"She still giving you grief about Sunday dinner?"

"Always."

He made a sound that might have been a laugh. Turned a page. Settled deeper into the

pillow.

Helena got into bed. Pulled the covers up. Lay on her back looking at the ceiling.

"Damian."

"Mm?"

"Are you happy?"

The tablet stopped moving.

He turned and looked at her. Really looked at her, the way he hadn't all evening, with both

eyes and his full attention and no phone in his hand. The question was sitting between them

and she watched him decide what to do with it.

"What kind of question is that?" he said.

"A simple one."

He put the tablet down. "I'm fine, Helena. Work is a lot right now. I'm tired." A beat. "Why are

you asking me this?"

"Because I don't ask enough." She kept her eyes on the ceiling. "I ask about your day and I

tell you about Cassidy and I pass messages along and I never actually ask if you're happy."

The room was quiet.

"I'm happy," he said.

She nodded once. Slowly."Are you?" he asked.

She turned her head and looked at him. At the jaw she knew and the eyes watching her

carefully and the hand resting on the duvet between them, still and quiet and giving nothing

away.

"I'm tired," she said. "Goodnight, Damian."

Something moved across his face. There and gone.

"Goodnight," he said.

He picked up the tablet. She turned toward the window. The street lamp outside threw orange

light through the curtain and it fell across the pillow and she watched it and said nothing and

lay very still and thought about an open rooftop somewhere in Velmont and a hand placed

with intention on the small of a woman's back.

She did not sleep for a long time.

When she finally did her face was dry.

She had made a decision in the kitchen tonight without knowing she was making it. Standing

over her phone with the photo on the screen and the dish towel folded and the city outside not

caring about any of it.

She was going to find out the truth.

All of it.

And she was going to do it quietly.

Cassidy called at eight-fifteen the next morning.

Helena picked up on the second ring. "I was awake.""Obviously you were awake." Cassidy never softened a conversation at the beginning. It wasn't her nature. "You sound strange. What happened?"

"Nothing happened."

"Helena."

"I'm fine, Cassidy."

"You sound like you sound when you're not saying something and you're trying to sound like

you're saying something." A pause. "What happened last night?"

Helena looked at the empty side of the bed. Damian had been gone before she woke up. His

coffee cup was rinsed and placed in the sink the way he always left it. Neat. Considered. Like

a man with a clear conscience.

"I found a photo," she said.

Cassidy went quiet in that particular way that meant she was listening with everything.

"What kind of photo?"

Helena told her.

All of it. The name on the phone screen that had started it. The search. The rooftop image. His

hand. His face. The way she had stood in the kitchen afterward and then gone upstairs and

lain beside him like everything was fine.

Cassidy didn't say a word until she was completely finished.

Then she said, "Send me the link right now."

"Cassidy, I don't want you to..."

"Helena Rose Graves, send me the link."

Helena sent it.She heard Cassidy open it on the other end. Heard the silence that followed. The specific kind of silence that meant her sister was looking at the same photo and arriving at the same place

Helena had been standing in her kitchen trying not to arrive at.

"Who is she?" Cassidy said. Not a question. The question underneath the question.

"I don't know yet."

"Yet." The word landed flat and certain. "I'm coming over."

"You really don't have to..."

"I already have my keys."

The line went dead.

Helena sat on the edge of the unmade bed with the phone in her hand and the morning light

coming through the curtain and the faint smell of Damian's soap still on his pillow beside her.

She thought about how she had started that chicken at five-thirty yesterday. How she had

remembered the rosemary because he had mentioned once, casually, the way he mentioned

most things, that the lemon version was too sharp. How she had looked up when his key hit

the door the way she always did, like some part of her was permanently tuned to the

frequency of him coming home.

She thought about his face in the photo.

She thought about the pause before "I'm happy."

Downstairs the front door opened. Cassidy had a key. Had always had a key.

"Helena!" Cassidy's voice came up the stairs carrying two coffees from the smell of it. "Get

down here."

Helena stood up.

She smoothed the covers on her side of the bed.

She left his side exactly as he had left it.Then she went downstairs to have the conversation she had been having in her own head since eight o'clock last night, alone in a kitchen, looking at a photo that had already changed everything even if she hadn't said so out loud yet.