Seven days. Seven long days of hearing Brenda talk about how loud the downtown square was going to be, how the brass band would set off my migraines, and how precious our little boy was before he even got here.

It started last Tuesday morning when Brenda called on the landline because she never trusted cell towers. I was sitting at the kitchen table rubbing my temples after a two-day spell that had left me seeing spots behind my eyelids.

My husband, Marcus, was already out the door for his morning shift at the lumber yard, so I picked up on the second ring, expecting him to have forgotten his keys again.

“Maybe the parade’s not a good idea for her,” Brenda said without even saying hello, her voice tight and schoolteacher-proper through the heavy plastic receiver. “It’s too loud. Too crowded. She should rest.”

At the time, I just nodded into the phone like a fool. My head still throbbed behind my left eye, and the thought of standing on the hot asphalt for two hours with firecrackers going off and crowds pressing in from all sides made my stomach turn anyway. Honest to God, it didn’t sound like a trap back then. It sounded like an annoying, overbearing mother-in-law being her usual exhausting self.

Marcus came home that evening smelling of sawdust and pine resin, tossing his faded red ball cap onto the counter next to the mail.

When I mentioned his mother’s phone call and told him I’d probably just stay home and keep the AC cranked, he gave me that warm, crooked smile I fell in love with five years ago. He walked over, pressed his warm palm right against my belly where the baby was kicking, and kissed the top of my head.

“I still gotta go, honey,” he said, his voice dropping into that soft register he knew always disarmed me. “Dad and Grandpa are driving down from the county line, and Grandpa’s eighty-nine. This might be his last parade, you know? It means the world to him.”

So I kissed him back, told him to make sure Grandpa wore his sun hat, and spent the next few days planning a quiet holiday alone with a stack of magazines and a box of lemon popsicles. I even baked him a cherry pie to take with him, wrapping the tin in foil so it wouldn’t slide around on the floorboards of his truck.

The morning of the Fourth broke hot and heavy, the kind of thick Alabama heat that makes the air feel like wet flannel before the sun even clears the pine trees. Marcus left around eight o’clock, dressed in his favorite blue polo and clean jeans, carrying the pie in one hand and his truck keys in the other. He leaned down to kiss me one last time, smelling of peppermint mouthwash and laundry detergent, and told me he’d check in around noon.

I spent the morning moving lazily from the sofa to the kitchen, watching the local morning show on mute while the ceiling fan clicked overhead. By eleven o’clock, the humidity inside the house felt stifling, so I decided to fill a pitcher with ice water.

That was when the kitchen faucet decided to violently disassemble itself.

There was a sudden, sharp crack from beneath the sink, followed immediately by a high-pitched hiss that turned into a roaring geyser.

Water blasted sideways, hitting the cabinet doors and spraying across the linoleum in a thick, foaming arc. I lunged forward to grab a towel, but my belly got in the way, and I slipped on the slick floor, catching my hip hard against the edge of the dishwasher.

Panic hit me like a physical blow. My hands were shaking so hard I could barely unlock my phone, but I managed to tap Marcus’s contact photo, his face smiling back at me from our trip to Pensacola last summer.

It rang four times before going straight to voicemail. I stared at the little screen, my breath catching in my throat as water pooled around my bare ankles, soaking the hem of my maternity shorts. I tried again, my thumb slipping against the glass because my palms were slick with sweat.

Fifteen minutes. Fifteen whole minutes went by while I stood there clutching a soaking dish towel, listening to the relentless spray of water hissing against the baseboards and wondering if the kitchen floor was going to cave straight through to the crawlspace.

When he finally picked up, I didn’t even give him a chance to speak. “Marcus, where are you? The sink blew! The valve won’t turn, there’s water everywhere, what do I do?”

He sounded winded. Not like someone standing on a crowded sidewalk watching a high school marching band go by, but like someone who had just sprinted up two flights of stairs. His breathing was heavy, uneven, clipping through the speaker with a strange, hollow echo.

“I’m with grandpa, babe,” he said, his voice dropping an octave as he cut me off mid-sentence. “Can’t talk. Call a plumber, okay?”

The line clicked dead before I could tell him I didn’t know any plumbers who worked on a holiday morning. But as I stared down at the screen, my thumb hovering over the red end button, the video call icon didn’t disappear. The FaceTime feed was still running. A tiny thumbnail of my own panicked face flickered in the corner, while the main screen stayed active, broadcasting a live, unbroken feed from his pocket or his hand.

I froze, the wet towel slipping from my fingers into the rising puddle around my feet.

The camera was pointed sideways, capturing a narrow sliver of a room that had nothing to do with Main Street, red-brick storefronts, or marching bands. There was no asphalt. No bright, glaring sunlight filtering through cotton-candy smoke. Instead, I was staring at a polished hardwood floor I had never seen before, flanked by the hem of a floral-patterned curtain and the distinct, polished cherrywood leg of a nightstand. On top of that nightstand sat a familiar silver compact mirror and a half-empty glass of iced tea with a striped straw.

The audio stayed open, too. Through the small speaker, beneath the sound of Marcus’s hurried shuffling, I heard a woman’s voice laugh. It wasn’t an old woman’s voice. It was light, melodic, and entirely relaxed.

“Is she buying it?” she asked.

Marcus muttered something low and sharp that I couldn’t quite catch, and then the screen violently jerked as he grabbed the phone, the camera flashing upward to catch a brief, terrifying glimpse of a white ceiling fan spinning slowly overhead before the connection finally terminated with a soft double-beep.

I stayed standing in the middle of the kitchen floor for a long, quiet minute, listening to the steady hiss of water spraying against the cabinets. My heart wasn’t racing anymore. It felt heavy, cold, and entirely still, dropping straight down into my chest like a lead weight.

Brenda didn’t call because of my migraines. Brenda called to clear the board. She called because Marcus had a three-day weekend, a willing alibi, and a second life tucked away in some quiet neighborhood twenty minutes outside town, while I sat at home pregnant and obedient, resting just like I was told.

The water was soaking through my socks now, icy and indifferent. I didn’t call a plumber. I didn’t scream or throw anything against the wall, though every nerve ending in my body screamed for me to do it. Instead, I walked right past the geyser, refusing to let the panic take me over again, and reached under the sink with both hands until my fingers found the main supply line. I gripped the rusted metal handle with every ounce of strength I had left, twisting it hard to the right until the screeching hiss finally choked out and died.

Silence rushed back into the house, thick and suffocating.

I walked into the bedroom, my bare feet leaving wet prints across the hardwood hallway, and pulled my old gray canvas duffel bag down from the top shelf of the closet. I didn’t pack much. Just three changes of clothes, my prenatal records from the clinic file drawer, my charger, and the small wooden box where I kept my grandmother’s pearl earrings.

By one o’clock, the house was bone dry except for the puddle by the sink. I sat at the kitchen table with my phone in front of me, watching the clock tick forward in heavy, agonizing jerks.

At 3:15, a Ford pickup crunched into the gravel driveway outside. The engine cut off with a familiar shudder, and heavy boots hit the front porch steps. The screen door squeaked open, and Marcus walked through the front door carrying a red, white, and blue paper flag he must have picked up at a gas station on his way home, looking flushed and wearing an expression of practiced, theatrical exhaustion.

“Babe, you wouldn’t believe the traffic coming back from the square,” he started, kicking off his boots by the door before he noticed the absolute stillness of the room. “Grandpa wanted to stay for the fireworks, but we figured, “

He stopped dead in the entryway. His eyes swept over the dry kitchen floor, the motionless faucet, and then down to the floor by the front door where my canvas bag sat zipped and waiting.

“What’s this?” he asked, his voice losing its cheerful holiday ring, dropping into that sharp, defensive edge he always used when he knew he was cornered but refused to admit it.

I didn’t stand up. I just looked at him across the kitchen table, feeling the baby give a small, reassuring kick against my ribs as if telling me to hold my ground.

“How was the parade, Marcus?” I asked, my voice terrifyingly calm even to my own ears.

He blinked, his shoulders stiffening visibly beneath his blue polo. “I told you. It was hot, it was crowded. Dad and Grandpa are still down at the diner getting a burger.”

“That’s funny,” I said, leaning forward resting my forearms on the laminate table. “Because when the kitchen sink blew this morning and you FaceTimed me back out of breath, I didn’t hear a single brass band. But I did see the cherrywood nightstand in Chloe’s guest room. And I heard her ask you if I was buying it.”

The color drained out of his face so fast he looked like he’d seen a ghost, his mouth opening and closing twice before any sound came out. “Wait. Let me explain. That wasn’t, the feed just glitched, you’re misunderstanding what, “

“Don’t,” I said, holding up one hand to stop him right there in his tracks. “Just don’t waste the breath. Your mother already gave you the script last Tuesday, and you’re butchering the delivery.”

He took a step forward, his hands raised in that pathetic, pleading gesture men always use when they realize their entire world is crumbling because they couldn’t keep their lies straight. “Honey, please. It’s not what you think. It was just one time, we were ending it, “

“I don’t care,” I whispered, and for the first time all day, my voice actually cracked. “I really, truly don’t care.”

I stood up slowly, pushing my chair back against the wall. I reached down to my left hand, sliding my heavy diamond engagement ring and the plain gold band right off my finger, feeling the sudden, strange lightness of my skin where they had lived for five years.

I walked over to the kitchen counter, setting both rings down side by side right in the center of the clean, dry surface, exactly where the morning sun used to hit the laminate before the shadows crept across the room.

Marcus didn’t try to stop me as I picked up my bag, zipped my jacket against the air conditioning, and walked out the front door without looking back once.