When the Fog Clears, No One Loves You

And the note on the file read,

“I'll always be your safety net.”

I stared at the screen. I don't know how long I sat there.

From the day Sean and I married until now, I had run the household for him, cared for his parents, smoothed over every tangle with the relatives.

Even I had nearly forgotten I was once a pilot.

A tear dropped onto the back of my hand, and I lifted it to wipe the wetness away.

So it turned out he wasn't incapable of tenderness. He'd just never once thought to catch me when I fell.

I closed the file, shut the laptop, and drove straight to the company.

“Mr. Fox, I heard the foreign airlines are short-staffed. Are they still looking for pilots?”

“I'm hoping you'll give me a chance. I want to fly international routes.”

Joshua Fox's eyes lit up.

“Delilah, you handled that accident so well back then. All these years you never once brought up flying again, so I assumed you'd given it up.”

“If you're willing to go, then it's not too late to start over now.”

Back home, I started packing.

This house meant nothing to me anymore.

The only thing I wanted to take with me was the memories of Cassie.

In all my years married to Sean, the one thing I never regretted was giving birth to Cassie.

She had been such a good girl from the start. On her first day of preschool, worried I'd fret over her, she'd asked her teacher to take a whole batch of photos to send me.

Later she grew up, school kept her busier and busier, and the photos grew far fewer.

Last year for her birthday, we'd planned to go skiing as a family.

But Sean said he had a tough case to fight and no time.

Cassie wrapped her arms around my neck and kissed me, comforting me,

“Mommy, it's okay. Daddy's not coming, but Cassie has you, and that's enough.”

I held her and said yes, and up on the mountain we took so many photos.

In them, Cassie was so vivid, so lovely. Afterward I saved every one of those photos onto a USB drive.

But when I pulled open the drawer, I found the box that held the USB drive empty.

Remembering that Sean had come in here earlier, I was about to reach out to him.

Then I saw a video Myra had posted on her feed.

“Sweetheart, this USB drive has so much space, plenty of room for lots of the baby's photos!”

“Later we'll put all my prenatal chart and ultrasound scans on it too. I even booked a maternity photo shoot, so we'll save those negatives on it as well.”

So Sean had gone to the hospital to keep Myra company.

In the video, Myra leaned against Sean's shoulder, pointing at the screen and smiling like a newlywed wife eager for the child on the way.

But I recognized it at once: the USB drive they were using was the very one I'd used to store Cassie's photos.

When I reached the hospital, I saw Sean peeling shrimp for Myra.

Sean had a severe shellfish allergy.

At every family gathering, he'd wave the nanny over in disgust to take the whole plate of shrimp away.

When I was pregnant and craving it, I ordered a plate of spicy shrimp.

He watched me finish it, said nothing, and then in the middle of the night walked out of the house with his briefcase in hand.

He told me he had a flight to catch that night.

So it turned out that, from start to finish, it had always been different.

Myra saw me and shrank back under the covers in fright, explaining pitifully,

“Delilah, I'm on an IV, it's hard to manage, so Sean was just helping me. Please don't blame him.”

“Sweetheart, Delilah just can't do without you. See? She came all this way.”

“Besides, she's got nothing to her name now. If you weren't taking care of her, how could she wear such nice clothes, live in that gorgeous penthouse? Chasing after you this fast—she really is a parasite vine.”

“I could never drape myself over a man and feed off him like that. So all I can do is carry everything on my own!”

Sean tucked the edge of the blanket down around her, his eyes full of tenderness.

“Yes. No one's stronger than you, Myra.”

Sean looked over at me, and there was nothing in his eyes but helplessness.