By late afternoon, the hospital discharged her with bandages, instructions, medication, and a list of follow-up appointments. Walking hurt, so Rachel helped her into the car slowly, one careful step at a time.
The Arizona sun was beginning to lower, turning the hospital windows gold. For a moment, Emily looked at the sky and thought about the wedding photos that had been taken only days before. Her white dress. Daniel’s hand at her waist. Susan crying in the front row, dabbing her eyes as if overwhelmed with joy.
How strange, Emily thought, that photographs could preserve a lie so beautifully.
Rachel lived fifteen minutes away in a small townhouse filled with plants, books, and the soft disorder of an honest life. She made tea without asking and set it on the coffee table beside Emily, then pulled a blanket over her lap.
“Do you want to talk?” Rachel asked.
Emily stared at the steam rising from the mug.
“I don’t know what I want.”
“That’s okay.”
Emily looked around the room. A crooked painting hung above the bookshelf. A stack of unopened mail sat near the door. Rachel’s cat, Juniper, watched from under a chair with suspicious yellow eyes.
It was ordinary.
So ordinary that it hurt.
“My marriage lasted three days,” Emily said.
Rachel sat beside her. “Your marriage did not fail because you refused to be hurt in silence.”
Emily looked down at her ring.
It gleamed softly in the lamplight, delicate and almost innocent. Daniel had chosen it with her. They had sat in the jeweler’s office laughing because he kept guessing her size wrong. He had kissed her fingers and said he couldn’t wait to build a life together.
Had he meant any of it?
Or had he meant a different life than she imagined?
