AFTER DIVORCE

Forehead Kiss

Chapter Three: Forehead Kiss

I heard his key in the door before it opened.

That sound. That specific small sound that, for four years, had made something in me relax, like a breath I’d been holding all day finally letting it go.

But today was different. My jaw tightened. I pressed my hands flat against my thighs and stood at the foot of the stairs, watching the door swing open.

Edward walked in looking rested.

That was the thing that hit me first. Not guilt, tension, or even the smallest shadow of a man who had spent two days doing something worth hiding. He walked in like he always did, jacket over one arm and an easy smile already on his face, filling the doorway with the same confidence I had seen a thousand times before. Relaxed and completely unbothered.

Before I could open my mouth, Margaret was already across the room.

"Edward!"

She moved faster than I had ever seen her move for anything, her arms wide open, face lit up, crossing the living room like she hadn't seen him in years instead of weeks. Edward dropped his jacket on the nearest chair and caught her, wrapping both arms around her, and the two of them stood there in the middle of my living room doing that thing they always did. That warm, loud, slightly excessive mother and son reunion that managed to make everyone else in the room feel like furniture.

"Look at you," Margaret said, pulling back to hold his face in both hands the way she used to when he was a child. "How did it go? Hope it went well?"

"Smooth, Mom." Edward grinned. "Everything went perfectly."

Margaret squeezed his face and looked at him like he had just told her he won an award. "That's my son." She patted his cheek twice, hard and proud. "I trust you completely. I always do."

This fool, I thought, standing exactly where I was, hands still flat against my thighs. He is standing right there, lying to his mother's face, and she’s patting his cheek for it.

They had moved on already. Edward had his arm around Margaret's shoulder and she was telling him something about the drive over and he was laughing at whatever it was and neither of them had looked in my direction once.

I was standing five feet away.

I had been standing there since the door opened.

I watched my husband laugh with his mother in my living room and felt something move through me that I did not have a clean word for. Not just pain. Something underneath the pain. Something that had been sitting there for a long time, getting very still, cold, and quiet.

"Hey babe."

I blinked.

Edward had finally turned and seen me standing at the foot of the stairs. He was already walking toward me, arms wide open, wearing that easy, warm smile that used to make something in my chest respond before I knew any better. "Hope you didn't miss me too much," he said, arms spreading wider as he got closer.

I did not move toward him.

I remained exactly where I was.

I just stood there and looked at his face, searching for something—anything. One flicker of what he should have been feeling while standing in front of me. One small crack in the performance.

There was nothing.

He was still smiling.

"Of course she didn't miss you," Margaret's voice cut across the room sharply. "Not more than your mother did."

Edward stopped walking and turned back toward her and they both laughed. Loud and easy and completely comfortable, two people sharing a joke in a room where I happened to also be standing.

I felt the heat crawl up the back of my neck.

I am his wife, I thought. I am right here.

Edward walked back to his mother still laughing and took her hand, and then the two of them moved toward the stairs together like a decision had been made that I was not part of. He passed me on the way, close enough for me to smell his cologne—the same one I had bought him for Christmas, the same one he'd been wearing in that hotel room. But underneath it, I caught a faint hint of vanilla that wasn't part of his cologne.

I knew the reason for that already.

He stopped just long enough to press his lips to my forehead.

Then he moved past me, heading up the stairs with his mother's hand in his. He was already asking whether she was tired from the drive, his voice warm and attentive. My forehead still felt like it was burning where his lips had just been. Margaret looked back at me from the upper stairs.

She gave me a look that lasted more than a second. It was not angry, not even unkind. It was something worse than that. It was the look of a woman who had always known this was coming and had simply been waiting to be proven right.

Then she turned back to Edward and said something I didn't catch and he laughed again and they disappeared around the top of the stairs.

I stood at the bottom and listened to their footsteps move across the ceiling above me.

Then I walked to the dining table and sat down.

I don't know exactly why I sat down. There was nothing at the table. I wasn't hungry. I had nothing to do. I just needed to be somewhere that wasn't the middle of the room, a place with four walls around me and a surface to put my hands on.

Their laughter came through in waves. Loud, then quiet, then loud again. His was deep and easy. Hers was bright and satisfied. Just like two people completely at home with each other.

I sat with my hands flat on the table and listened and stared at the wall in front of me.

The forehead kiss was still burning.

That was the thing I could not shake. Not the way he had walked past me, or the way Margaret had looked at me on the stairs, not even the two days of lies sitting between us like something rotting.

It was the forehead kiss. I felt irritated by the kiss and rubbed my forehead with the tip of my sleeve. I was sure he had kissed Sandra's hair in that hotel room.

I had seen it in the pictures. They looked like they had done more than that.

And then he had walked into his own house and pressed those same lips on my forehead for one cold second on his way past.

My hands curled slowly on the table.

Above me the laughter went quiet.

Then I heard Edward's voice, low and careful, followed by Margaret's. I couldn't make out their words, but their voices were hushed and deliberate— they sounded like t

wo people discussing something they didn't want me to know.

I pushed my chair back slowly.