Page 106 of Angels Are Falling

There was nothing else to say between us, just the unbearable silence of two people who had lost each other in a big house.

“The gifts,” I said, because I had to fill the silence with something, and my hands had nothing to do. “I brought some things. For you and the kids. There’s a rug you’ll lose your mind over, and the sweets from this shop that I thought you’d like, and—” I was already half turning toward the entry where the bags were. “Let me just grab them, and you can open them. It’ll only take a second⁠—”

“That’s really sweet,” Amelie said. “But you don’t have to. Honestly. I’m just really tired.” She wrapped her arms around herself, not against the cold—there was no cold—against me, against the whole shape of this. “Maybe later. Okay?”

Once, I’d bought Amelie a pair of simple earrings with my hard-earned money. She tore into the box excitedly, and I still vividly remembered those shining eyes. She had called Rose to tell her all about it.

Now she said, Maybe later.

“Okay,” I said.

Just then, her phone on the kitchen counter lit up, a pale blue rectangle.

“There’s my phone.”

Amelie had never been particularly attached to her phone and had a habit of leaving it around the house. It was no wonder she hadn’t seen my text. I watched her walk over, her thumbs moving across her phone’s screen.

“Oh, I see your text now,” she said absentmindedly, scrolling through what I could only presume were the rest of her messages. “I missed a bunch of texts.”

I didn’t need to ask who had sent the other messages when I saw a small private smile tugging at her mouth. Even the inanimate house already knew the answer. But I was desperate to connect with my wife.

“Who texted you?”

“Um, it’s just—” She started to respond but forgot when another text chimed in.

“Anything important?” I asked tentatively.

“Er—” Her smile broadened when her phone vibrated once more, indicating more messages were coming through.

She finished reading through the texts and set the phone face down on the counter without responding. She probably figured it was rude to engage in a text conversation while I awkwardly watched. “Sorry, what were you saying?”

A small memory returned to me, a similar instance when the shoe was on the other foot. At that time, I had been distracted while my loving wife had desperately sought my attention. She had asked who was texting in an attempt to connect with me, and I had brushed her off just as callously.

An imaginary ice pick stabbed me in the heart. Was this the pain my wife felt all the times I ignored her?

“Don’t worry about it,” I told her. I deserved to feel the same pain that I made her feel.

I stood there in the middle of the room that was a copy of the happiest place I’d ever lived, holding nothing, while my wife waited politely for me to leave, and for the life of me, I could not think of a single thing to do.

I said the only thing I had left. “Stay with me tonight. On my side of the house.”

The change in her was immediate. She flinched slightly and tried to fold away before I could see it. Her arms tightened around herself. “Stefan, I don’t think⁠—”

“Not like that.” I lifted both hands, palms out, the universal surrender of a man promising to behave. “I know we have things to work on and you need time… after everything. I just want to fall asleep next to my wife. That’s all. That’s still allowed, isn’t it?”

She glanced back over her shoulder, toward the warm hall behind her, toward the bedroom I now understood was theirs, and something in her expression set to work on a problem that shouldn’t have been a problem at all.

“Kai won’t be back until the morning. You said so yourself,” I pointed out, hating that I’d reached for his name to win the point. “Why can’t we stay together if he’s not even here?”

It was the wrong thing to watch land. She didn’t loosen. If anything, hearing that he was gone made her more careful, not less, as though his absence was something she’d been left in charge of guarding rather than a door left conveniently open. I didn’t understand it. I filed it under the long list of things about my wife I no longer seemed to understand.

I wanted to ask her about the closet. About her things, gone, the rod swept bare, the question I’d carried up the stairs and into this conversation like a stone in my shoe. Where are your clothes, Am? Why did you move all of it out? What is happening to us? I’d meant to ask those questions. But she was already standing there holding her own elbows like the floor might tilt, already spooked by nothing more than a request to share a bed, and I knew that if I pushed on the closet now, I’d lose whatever fragile inch of her I still had. So, I swallowed it. I set it down with all the other things I wasn’t saying.

“One night,” I said again, gentler. “Please. We haven’t stayed together in so long.” You’re still my wife, aren’t you?

The front door opened before she could answer. I heard three sets of footsteps—the kids—and the house filled, briefly, with the exact sound I’d flown across the world for, and then, just as fast, broke my heart with how it landed.

“Kai?” Bella’s voice, hopeful, pitched to carry. “Where’s Kai?”