The Voice Underneath Chapter 3
Evan stayed in bed until the light coming through the blinds went from gray to the dull yellow of late morning. The phone buzzed on the nightstand, once, twice, then mercifully stopped. Dispatch, probably. Or maybe his supervisor. He let it die without looking. The silence afterward felt thick, but beneath it he could still hear things. The clock downstairs. Tick. Tick. Tick. It sounded louder without Chelsea there, as if it knew it had an audience now. But maybe it was just louder because he missed the sound of her light breathing whilst she slept, when he stared at her sleeping face through the filtered light coming through the thin curtains and marvelled at how peaceful and beautiful she looked.
Betrayal curdled in his chest. Not the sharp kind, but the sour, lingering kind that spoiled everything it touched. Chelsea had left because she thought he was broken. Because she thought he could be fixed. And worse, because she thought he should be. He wondered when she’d started planning it. How long she’d been packing herself away from him, piece by piece, while he was busy listening to strangers die.
When he finally dragged himself out of bed, the house greeted him like a stranger. Her mug still sat in the sink. Her shoes by the door. Proof that she had existed here, and proof that she didn’t anymore. He stood in the kitchen for a long time, just listening to the clock tick its steady, accusing rhythm. For the first time, it didn’t remind him of calls gone wrong or breaths that stopped too soon.
It reminded him of absence.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, a voice whispered that he should call her. Apologize. Beg. Do something. But another voice (older, darker) told him it was too late. That once people decided you were beyond saving, they stopped listening to anything you had to say.
The clock kept ticking.
And Evan, for the first time in years, did absolutely nothing.
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Chelsea felt guilty. Not the soft kind that dulled with time, but the kind that sat in her chest and pressed down when the world went quiet. Guilty that she had left her husband when he needed her most, when he was stripped bare and vulnerable. Guilty that she had met someone else and fallen in love again, that she had been reminded of what love was supposed to feel like.
But she had. That part couldn’t be undone. And she didn’t want Evan to hear about it from someone else, from a friend. A mutual friend now. The thought alone made her stomach twist. That was what it had come to.
The truth was simpler and uglier. Their marriage had been breaking for a long time. She knew it. He knew it. They just hadn’t said it out loud. She missed him sometimes, missed the way he held her at night or the way he’d looked at her on their wedding day.
What she didn’t know - what she couldn’t know - was how much Evan missed her.