Page 53 of Pretend You Love Me

“Elsie,” he says, his voice carrying a note of wistfulness.

“Daniel,” I reply, already stepping back to let him in. “Come in.”

We exchange polite small talk that is somehow more exhausting than screaming, yes, the twins slept okay, yes, the car service got booked, yes, he found the charger he was looking for, while Daniel moves through the house with the unhurried quality of someone who knows what they’re doing and why. He collects the study items first, textbooks and reference materials, and then the garage tools, each one handled with careful attention before being placed in the bin bag.

From his position on the play mat, Milo watches this whole process. His eyes follow Daniel from room to room, tracking each movement with careful attention, and then, without warning, he launches himself toward Daniel’s legs.

“Ma!” he announces, already grabbing for Daniel’s shoelaces with both hands. “Da!”

Daniel looks down, really looks, and something complicated flashes across his face. Not guilt or grief, but something more complex, as though the weight of his actions are finally settling into his understanding.

“Hey, buddy,” he says quietly, already reaching down to pick Milo up. “How’s it going?”

Milo, never one to be outdone by potential admirers, responds by grabbing directly for Daniel’s face. The movement is so specifically him, just what he does to everyone who picks him up, that Daniel laughs despite himself, a real one that makes Milo glance up with delight.

In the background, Luca watches this exchange with no comments, just leaning against my kitchen bench with his own coffee. Silent but almost daring Daniel to step out of line.

Then Daniel reaches for Maisie, and something in my chest goes very quiet. Maisie was more hesitant last time, and that moment of hesitation destroyed something in both Daniel and me. No matter what he did to me, the twins need their dad, and he needs them just as much, probably more.

Maisie goes to him without hesitation this time and then she does the thing she’s started doing with people she trusts, she presses one small palm flat against his jaw and just holds it there, studying his face calmly.

Daniel goes completely still. His jaw tightens. His eyes close briefly, a movement so small I almost miss it, and then open again, focused entirely on Maisie’s face. He doesn’t cry, but it’s close, I can see the sheen to his eyes from here.

I watch it happen from across the kitchen with my coffee cup held in both hands, feeling the full complicated wreckage of anger and grief and unwanted empathy moving through my chest at the same time. I don’t look away. Don’t comfort him. Don’t make it a moment or a speech or any of the other gestures people usually offer in these situations.

I just let it be what it is.

After Daniel has loaded the last box into his car, the bin bag of garage tools, a stack of DVDs from the living room shelf, a framed photograph of his university rugby team that’s been sitting on his desk since we moved in, he comes back to the kitchen and sets his house keys on the counter. He doesn’t make a show of it, just places them there carefully.

He looks at them for a second, just a second, and then at me, and I know that we are both feeling the weight of this moment.

“I didn’t think this would happen to us,” he says quietly.

Those words encompass all the emotions currently rioting through my body.

I look at the keys and then at Daniel, my face arranged in an expression so sad that Daniel’s face drops further. “Neither did I.”

No cruelty in it. No forgiveness either. Just the truth.

Daniel nods once, the gesture that contains an entire universe of feeling, and turns toward the door. “I’ll text when I get the twins on Saturday,” he says, already reaching for the handle. “Let you know how they’re settling in.”

“Thank you,” I reply.

Then he’s gone, the door closing behind him with a soft click that somehow manages to sound both ordinary and significant at the same time, and the house settles around me.

Luca waits approximately four seconds, the specific, careful timing of someone who’s been physically restraining himself for far longer than normal, before asking casually, “Scale of one to psychological collapse?”

I laugh, before immediately starting to cry, because apparently my emotions have decided to travel in a pack today. The sound is so unexpected, so completely at odds with the careful composure I’ve been maintaining since this morning, that for a moment, I just stand perfectly still in the kitchen with tears running down my face and no idea what to do next.

Then Luca is there, and I’m crying into his jumper again. He doesn’t say anything, not a single platitude or observation, he just holds me where I am.

And for once in his life, he doesn’t say a single stupid thing.

This is noted internally as a historical event.

After Luca leaves, promising to check in later, extracting one more hug that lasts about seven seconds longer than our usual goodbye, I move through the house in the quiet that follows something enormous. It’s not the held-breath quiet of the past two months, not the waiting for the other shoe to drop feeling. It’s something closer to when a space designed for noise is suddenly, completely empty, and the absence itself has become a presence.

Daniel’s shoes are gone from the hallway. The spot by the door where they always sat, right boot, left boot, precisely aligned with the edge of the mat, is just floor now, slightly darker than the surrounding wood from being protected from sunlight. The coat rack looks abandoned with only my things on it, a single jacket, two scarves, the cardigan that Luca describes as “emotionally distressed but stylistically committed”, I allow myself to breathe through a fresh wave of grief as it nearly bowls me over in intensity.