Page 195 of The Marriage Clause

Bad idea.

The dizziness gets worse when I sit up—a low rolling wave that makes me brace one hand on the mattress until the room steadies.

Heartbreak, apparently, has physical side effects.

Good to know.

I stay in bed longer than I mean to. Not sleeping. Just staring at the ceiling and trying not to think about how, less than twenty-four hours ago, I still thought I was building a life here.

I try not to think about it.

I think about it anyway.

Eventually I drag myself into the shower because lying here any longer feels too much like surrender.

The water helps a little. Just enough to make me feel human-shaped again.

Afterward I wander downstairs in one of Everett's T-shirts and a pair of leggings, hair still damp down my back and make coffee out of habit. The kitchen still smells like his soap because nothing in this damn house has figured out he left yet.

The first sip turns bitter in my mouth and settles wrong in my stomach.

I set the mug down and try toast, managing half of one bite before the idea of swallowing feels impossible.

That's fine. Normal. Entirely what happens when your husband dismantles your marriage like a quarterly restructuring and drives back to Seattle before you finish crying.

I take the coffee upstairs anyway. To the studio, because if there's one place in this house that's told me the truth lately, it's that room.

The light is soft this morning and the moment I step inside, my chest tightens so sharply I almost turn around. The painting is still on the easel. The aisle. The flowers. The man waiting at the end of it.

Our wedding. Painted by my hand before I was brave enough to say out loud what it meant.

I stand there holding my coffee and looking at it, and all I can think is that my hand figured it out before I did. Or maybe my hand was just as stupid as the rest of me. The room is full of him.

Not literally. He's not here. That's the problem.

But every inch of it feels chosen by him. The drafting table. The sink. The stacked Belgian canvases. The expensive brushes I never would have bought on an assistant's salary. The north-facing windows he picked because I mentioned once that north light is the best for painting, and he apparently filed that away like it was a quarterly report worth memorizing.

He built me a studio and then stood in the foyer and told me we were beneficial.

I set the coffee down harder than I mean to. It sloshes over the rim.

"Great," I mutter.

I force myself toward the easel anyway, picking up a brush and then squeeze out paint.

White. Gray. A little blue.

I stare at the palette and yet nothing happens.

No instinct. No pull. No truth trying to get out through my hand.

Just a room I thought meant love and now don't know how to stand in.

I put the brush back down when I realize that nothing is coming to me. It would be one thing if I were just heartbroken but this room was becoming mine. And now even this feels contaminated. Like every brushstroke I make in here belongs to him somehow. Like the art only came back because he gave it a place to live. Without him it'll just... stop again.

I hate that thought more than anything he said last night.

Now all I see now is the life I thought we were building. The bed where he held me, and the studio where he gave me back something I thought grief had taken for good.