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What if I called in favors? Used my connections to put pressure on Nolan to force him to let her go? I knew people. I had leverage in places that mattered. I could make Nolan’s life uncomfortable in ways he wouldn’t see coming.

But that would start a war. And in a war, Madigan would be caught in the crossfire. Nolan wouldn’t hesitate to use her as a shield, to make her choose sides. And right now, in the state she was in, I was terrified of which side she’d choose.

What if I just waited? Trusted that she would remember what we had, that she would find a way back to us? That the woman I fell in love with was still in there somewhere, just buried under layers of grief and manipulation and old family dynamics that I couldn’t begin to understand.

But every day that passed made that less likely. Every day she spent in that house, breathing that poison, listening to her father’s manipulation—it was like watching her slip away, inch by inch, and being powerless to stop it. I could feel the distance growing between us, even though technically she was only a few hours away.

I was going insane. Actually, genuinely losing my mind.

I could feel it happening, could feel my grip on reality loosening like sand slipping through my fingers, could feel the careful control I had spent years painstakingly building starting to fracture and splinter at the edges. It was like watching a dam develop hairline cracks, knowing the flood was inevitable but powerless to stop it.

My paranoia was back. Worse than before. So much worse. I checked the locks obsessively—every door, every window, sometimes three or four times in a single hour. I scanned the tree line for threats that didn’t exist, imagining shadows moving between the pines, seeing figures that vanished when I blinked. I jumped at every sound—the house settling, branches scraping against the siding, the wind howling through the eaves. My heart raced constantly, a drumbeat of fear I couldn’t silence.

The darkness was back, too. That familiar, terrible darkness I thought I had left behind. The monster I had tried so hard to bury, to cage, to starve into submission. The part of me that knew how to hurt people, how to make them suffer, how to take what I wanted by force. The part of me that had enjoyed it once. The part that still remembered how easy it was.

It whispered to me in the quiet moments, when I was alone with my thoughts. Told me to stop waiting. To stop being weak. To stop playing by rules that no one else seemed to follow. To go to Boston and take what was mine, consequences be damned. To remind certain people what happened when they pushed me too far.

And the terrifying part, the part that kept me awake at night staring at the ceiling, was that I was starting to listen.

Starting to think maybe the voice was right.

Day fourteen

Two weeks since everything had started unraveling.

I was standing in the kitchen at three in the morning, a bottle of whiskey open on the counter, the amber liquid catching the dim light from the stove. Henry was finally asleep after hours of crying, his small chest rising and falling as he lay in his crib upstairs. He had been fussy lately, cranky and inconsolable, like he could sense my deterioration, like my anxiety was seeping into him through my touch, poisoning him with my own poison.

I poured two fingers and downed it in one swallow, welcoming the burn as it traced a line of fire down my throat. I poured another immediately, my hand steadier than it should have been.

I hadn’t been drunk in years. Seven years, maybe eight. Hadn’t allowed myself the loss of control that came with it, the way alcohol stripped away inhibitions and revealed what lay beneath.

But right now, in this moment, I needed the numbness. Needed something—anything—to dull the sharp edges of the panic that had been building in my chest for two weeks straight, pressing against my ribs like it was trying to crack them open from the inside.

She had a phone. She would call.

I just had to wait.

But the waiting was killing me.

Day sixteen

My phone sat on the table beside me, always within reach, like some kind of lifeline I was clinging to with both hands. I carried it from room to room like it was an extension of my body, checked it obsessively every few minutes, made sure the ringer was on maximum volume, that the battery was fully charged, that I hadn’t somehow missed a call or a text or any sign that she was trying to reach me.

Nothing.

The silence was deafening. It filled every corner of this house, pressing against my chest until I could barely breathe.

Henry was crying again. He had been crying more and more these past few days, like he knew. Like he could feel his mother’s absence in his bones the same way I could. It was a different kind of crying now—not the usual hunger or discomfort, but something deeper. Something that sounded like grief, if a baby could grieve.

I picked him up, rocked him gently in my arms, and sang the lullabies Madigan used to sing when she had paced the nursery at three in the morning, her voice soft and melodic in the darkness. My voice was rough, off-key, nothing like hers. It cracked on the high notes and wavered on the low ones. But it was all I had to give him right now.

“Mama’s coming home,” I told him, pressing my lips to his soft hair, even though I didn’t believe it anymore. Even though every day that passed made it more of a lie, hollowing it out until there was nothing left but empty words. “She loves you so much. She’s just... she’s just taking care of her family. But she’ll come back. I promise.”

Another lie.

I was so full of lies now. Lies I told Henry when he looked at me with those big eyes that were so much like hers. Lies I told myself when I woke up reaching for her in the empty bed. Lies I told the empty house that echoed with her absence, where every room held memories of her that were slowly becoming unbearable.

The truth was too terrible to face.