Sarah's move

Alexandria’s POV

I didn’t sleep in the guest room that night.

Not because things were resolved they weren’t, not even close. But because the guest room had started feeling like a waiting room and I was tired of waiting for my own life to begin. I moved back into the main bedroom without announcing it, without making it mean anything, just pulled back the duvet on my side and got in and stared at the ceiling until my eyes got heavy.

Jamie came in around midnight.

He didn’t say anything about it. He just moved to his side, got in, and turned off the lamp. We lay in the dark with a foot of space between us that felt both smaller and larger than it actually was.

I fell asleep before him. I know because I was still awake when his breathing hadn’t evened out yet, still awake when he shifted once, twice, the way he did when his brain refused to let him go. But at some point the exhaustion won and I went under and when I woke up at six the space beside me was empty and cold and he’d been up for a while.

The nausea hit at six fifteen. Less violent than yesterday but persistent, a lowgrade wrongness that sat at the back of my throat and colored everything slightly grey. I ate two crackers from the packet I’d started keeping on the nightstand and waited it out.

When I came downstairs he was on a call, standing at the window in the kitchen with his back to me, one hand in his pocket, voice low. He turned when he heard me and held up one finger one minute and I nodded and went about getting myself tea like I had a right to this kitchen, which I did, technically, even if it had never quite felt that way.

He finished the call.

“Board meeting this morning,” he said. “I’ll be at the office by eight.”

“Okay.”

“Sarah will be there.” He said it neutrally, watching me.

“She’s always there,” I said, equally neutral.

“I’m going to talk to her.”

I looked up from my tea. “About what she told you yesterday?”

“About her role going forward.” He picked up his jacket from the back of the stool. “Some things need to change.”

I didn’t say anything because I didn’t trust what would come out. Part of me wanted to say finally and part of me was waiting for the version of this where Sarah talked him out of it before lunch and he came home having convinced himself I’d overreacted.

“Don’t do it for me,” I said instead.

He paused, jacket half on. “What?”

“Whatever you’re going to say to her don’t do it as a gesture toward me. Do it because it’s right. If you do it for me you’ll resent me for it in six months and I’ll be the reason Sarah got pushed out and she’ll make sure everyone knows that.”

He looked at me for a moment. Something moved across his face that might have been respect, or surprise, or both.

“Okay,” he said.

He left at ten to eight.

Sarah showed up at the house at nine.

I was in the sunroom with a book I wasn’t reading when Elaine came to the door. “Ms. Caldwell is at the gate, ma’am.”

Ms. Caldwell. Sarah had never married either. Always Ms. Caldwell. Always waiting.

“Let her in,” I said.

Because I was done hiding from Sarah in my own house. I’d been doing it for five years making myself small, taking the long way around rooms at events, swallowing things I should have said. Not today.

She came in looking polished and deliberate in a white blazer and heels, her hair perfect, a smile that was warm on the surface and calculating three layers down. She was carrying a small gift bag that I immediately distrusted.

“Alexandria.” She looked around the sunroom. “I didn’t realize you’d be home. I just dropped by to leave something for Jamie. His a file he needed.”

“He’s at the office,” I said. “You could have emailed it.”

Her smile stayed exactly where it was. “I prefer to handle things in person. You know how I am.”

“I do,” I said. “Sit down, Sarah.”

Something flickered in her eyes. She sat.

I put my book down and looked at her properly. I’d spent years being afraid of this woman. Afraid of her access, her influence, the particular way she occupied Jamie’s world. She knew his coffee order and his schedule and the names of his clients’ wives and a hundred small details I’d never been trusted with. She had built herself into a necessity and then used that necessity like a blade.

“What did you tell him?” I said.

“I’m sorry?”

“Yesterday. When he called you. What did you tell him about Kendrick?”

The smile didn’t drop but it recalibrated. “I just shared what I knew. I thought he deserved to have the full picture.”

“The full picture,” I repeated. “Which was what, exactly?”

“That you and Kendrick have been meeting privately for over a year. That you have feelings for him. That the timing of your pregnancy is”

“Careful,” I said quietly.

She stopped.

“You told my husband that his wife was carrying another man’s child,” I said. “Based on nothing. Based on a timeline you deliberately framed to look like something it wasn’t.” I kept my voice even because I had learned from the best how to deliver devastating things calmly. “That’s not sharing a full picture, Sarah. That’s a move. And not even a subtle one.”

She shifted in her seat. The blazer, the gift bag, the perfect hair all of it still in place, but something underneath was recalculating.

“I care about Jamie,” she said. “I’ve always”

“I know you have,” I said. “I’ve always known. And honestly, that part I understand. He’s easy to love from a distance.” I tilted my head. “It’s the up-close part that’s hard. You’d know that eventually.”

Her jaw tightened.

“I’m not going anywhere, Sarah,” I said. Not as a declaration of love for my marriage. I wasn’t sure I had that in me yet. But as a statement of fact about where I stood. “Not because of you. Not because of what you tell him or what you arrange or what you whisper into whatever gaps you find. I’m here because I chose to be here. And if I leave it’ll be on my own terms.”

She stood up. The gift bag stayed on the table, forgotten.

“Jamie will get tired of this version of you,” she said at the door. “The difficult one.”

I picked my book back up. “Then that’ll be between me and Jamie.”

She left.

Elaine appeared in the doorway thirty seconds later with the expression of someone who had heard everything and was professionally pretending she hadn’t.

“More tea, ma’am?” she said.

“Please,” I said.

And I finally felt like I was in my own house.