October, The Odd Ones

I waited inside the house, heart pacing in rhythm with the second hand on the wall clock. Then I heard it—the crunch of gravel beneath tires. Thomas's car.

It was strange. I felt... something. A flicker of joy. Not for him. But for Jimmy. Because Thomas—at long last—was trying. Becoming the father he should've been from the beginning. When he'd asked me if he could be the one to go to Jimmy after the party, I was surprised. But I said yes. Frankly, I could use the break. Time with the girls. Time to think. Time to breathe.

Still, I worried. Would Jimmy be angry with me?

I didn't wait for them to ring the bell. I opened the front door as they stepped out of the car. Jimmy saw me first. His little face lit up with a smile, and my chest loosened just enough to let me exhale.

He ran past me and into the house. I let him go, turning to Thomas instead.

"I missed him," Thomas said, rubbing the back of his neck. "We spent the evening together. Just the two of us. I forgot how funny he is."

"You forget a lot," I muttered, then instantly regretted the sting in my tone.

"I know." He nodded, looking exhausted. "I was hoping to see the girls too, but I know it's late."

"They're asleep."

He paused. Then: "I... I miss you, October."

I stared at him. Silent.

"I'm sorry. For everything I did wrong."

"That's gonna take a while," I said with a dry laugh, all snark and scabs.

"Yeah," he said softly. "You're right. But I'm back at work tomorrow. And we're doing it. We're making Father pay."

"And Laura?"

"If she's involved—yeah."

As if summoned by the mention of her, his phone rang. The screen lit up with a name that made my blood boil: Laura. I turned to walk away, but he caught my hand.

"Please," he said.

He answered. Put her on speaker.

"Hey, Tommy," she purred through the speaker, her voice all syrup and smugness. "Where've you been? I've been trying to reach you. I kinda need you. My cat's acting weird. I think we should take her to the vet, like, ASAP."

I rolled my eyes so hard I saw stars. Seriously? Her cat? AGAIN!

Thomas stiffened next to me. I could feel it—his shoulders locked, the slight twitch in his jaw. He tried to keep his voice level, but it came out clipped. "Hey, Laura. Yeah... I've been busy. Sorry about the cat, but can you call someone else? I'm... at home now."

A pause.

Then, her voice went sharp and sugary. "Well, that didn't stop you before."

Ouch.

The air in my lungs turned acidic. My gaze snapped to him, but he was already looking down—at his shoes, at the sidewalk, anywhere but at me. He didn't deny it. He didn't even blink.

"Yeah, I know," he muttered, barely audible. " I'm not feeling great tonight."

I hated how he said it—like it was a minor inconvenience. Like she hadn't just sliced me open in one sentence.

Laura laughed. Laughed. Like the whole thing was some inside joke and I was the punchline.

"Oh, wait—is the Mrs. upset because of the birthday party?" she said, dragging out the word like it tasted bitter on her tongue. "God, how insecure can she get?"

And just like that, something in me snapped.

I went cold. Completely, utterly cold. Not the kind of cold that makes you shiver—this was different. This was bone-deep. Like someone had opened a window inside me and let all the warmth leak out. My breath stalled somewhere in my chest, and my fingers curled into fists before I even realized I was doing it.

I felt my pulse in places I didn't know could throb—my throat, my wrists, my temples.

How dare she.

My mouth opened, but no sound came out. The words were there—I could feel them, sharp and righteous, clawing at the back of my tongue. I wanted to grab the phone. I wanted to burn her alive with words.

I wanted to scream, but instead of any of that, I stood there. Silent. Rigid. Thomas looked up at me, panic flickering behind his eyes. Like a kid caught stealing. Like a man who'd just realized too late that he'd messed up in a way he couldn't smooth over.

Then, into the phone, he stammered, "No—Laura, no, I'm really sick and yeah... anyway. Gotta go. Bye."

He hung up quickly. Too quickly. Like the act itself might erase the damage already done. But the silence that followed?  It was deafening. Louder than any insult Laura could've thrown. Louder than the thousand things he didn't say.

I didn't move. Didn't breathe. Just stood there, watching him like he was a stranger. Because in that moment... maybe he was. There was a dull, aching buzz under my skin, like I'd been standing too close to a fire and hadn't realized I was burning until now.

My throat ached. My eyes stung. He stepped forward, hesitant, voice low. "October..."

"No." He froze.

"Do you realize," I said slowly, deliberately, "that the only reason she feels entitled to speak about me like that is because you let her?"

He flinched—but I didn't stop. I couldn't.

"I am sure she's been throwing jabs for months, Thomas. Not playful. Not subtle. Straight-up disrespect. Little comments. Little digs. And every time she did, you said nothing."

I took a step closer. Not to intimidate, but to make sure he heard me. Every word.

"You just stood there. Silent. Like maybe if you kept your head down long enough, it wouldn't be your problem."

His eyes dropped to the floor. He was quiet. Too quiet. Like shame had stitched his lips shut.

I shook my head, a bitter laugh catching in my throat. "You weren't just silent, Thomas. You were complicit. Every time you let her disrespect me, you told her—without saying a single word—that I didn't matter enough to defend."

I didn't cry. I didn't scream. But I had never meant anything more in my life.

"I'm sorry," he mumbled, eyes dropping like they always did when it got real.

I laughed, but there was nothing soft about it. "You should tattoo that on your forehead. Save some breath."

His jaw tensed. Still, he said nothing.

"I know I messed up. All of it. From the beginning. I don't even know what to say to make it right."

"Be a good father. That's it. Because you suck as a husband."

I turned toward the door. My hand on the knob, I added, "My lawyer will be in touch. We need to start sorting out the divorce."

"No. Please, October. Don't—"

"Goodnight, Thomas."

I said it like a period at the end of a sentence I never wanted to write.

He lingered for a moment on the doorstep, eyes searching mine like he wanted to say something more—fix something, maybe. But I didn't flinch. I didn't soften. I just stepped inside and closed the door behind me.

The click of the lock echoed through the house, sharp and final. I stood there for a second—maybe longer. Still. Hollow. Like someone had scooped out everything soft inside me and left only skin and bone behind.

My therapist said I needed to find meaning outside of being a wife. That it was time to rediscover who I was without Thomas. But the truth is...I don't know who that is.

I fell in love with him when I was still learning how to be a person. A teenager in a hoodie and heartbreak, sure of only one thing in the entire world: him. And that love? It grew like ivy. It wrapped around me. Defined me. Became the way I saw myself.

And now?

Now I felt like a house with no lights on. The walls were still there. The shape was familiar. But everything inside was dark and unfamiliar. Uninviting. Empty.

I didn't realize I was trembling until I felt the small, steady hand on my arm. I turned.

Jimmy looked up at me, his face soft with sleep, but his eyes sharper than any fourteen-year-old's had a right to be.

"We'll be okay, Mom," he said. Just six little words—but they held me up like scaffolding. Like truth.

And just like that... the lights flickered back on.

I pulled him close and kissed the top of his head, breathing him in—apple shampoo and courage. "How could we not be, when I have an angel for a son? Go to bed, sweetheart." He gave a sleepy nod and padded off down the hall, dragging his blanket behind him like a knight retreating after battle.

I watched him until he disappeared into his room. Then I stayed by the door, the silence humming all around me, and let myself feel it all.

The grief. The relief. The fragile hope blooming in the rubble. Maybe I didn't know exactly who I was without Thomas yet.

But I knew who I was with Jimmy. And for now, that was enough.

*

The doorbell rang just as I was rinsing out the chili pot. I wiped my hands on a towel, already halfway to the door when I peeked through the window.

And then I froze. It was them. My heartbeat stuttered, then galloped. I yanked the door open so fast it slammed into the wall behind me—but I didn't care.

"Mom!" I all but launched myself into her arms the second the door opened. Her coat was still half-on, and her suitcase bumped into my ankle, but none of it mattered. Her perfume—faint lavender and freshly washed linen—hit me like muscle memory. A scent from childhood. A safe space in the storm.

I buried my face into her shoulder, fists clutching the back of her jacket, and for one beautiful, shattering moment... I wasn't a grown woman spiraling through a divorce. I was a little girl who scraped her knee on the driveway and needed her mom to kiss it better.

Safe. Held. Home.

Her arms wrapped around me tightly, no questions asked, just a steady hand at the nape of my neck and a soft, "Oh, sweetheart..."

My chest crumpled. I didn't mean to start crying, but I couldn't stop it. The tears came fast, hot, full of everything I'd been keeping sealed up for weeks. The weight of pretending. The ache of being left. The quiet unraveling I didn't want anyone to see.

Then came Dad.

He stepped in beside her, face creased with that familiar no-nonsense concern that could make a person feel both fiercely loved and lightly scolded in a single glance. I turned to him, already reaching. No hesitation. He wasn't the most emotionally expressive man, never had been, but when his arms came around me, they were solid. Certain. Reassuring in a way that felt like the ground returning under my feet.

He didn't say much. Just rubbed a hand up and down my back once and pressed a kiss to the top of my head, like he used to when I had nightmares at age nine. And just like that, I let go. Of the house. Of the pain. Of Thomas. And I held onto the two people who had always loved me in the clearest, quietest way.

They were here. I wasn't alone anymore.

"Hi there, Ladybug," he murmured.

I laughed through the sting in my throat. "Come in, come in." I ushered them inside like I hadn't just fallen apart on the welcome mat.

Mom brushed her windblown hair out of her face and set her purse down carefully, like she didn't want to disturb the air in the room—or maybe me.
"I spoke to Jeanine," she said gently. Her voice was soft but steady—the kind that held a thousand unsaid things. "She called right after we got back from the cruise. Told me you might need us."

That was all it took. My lip trembled, and my breath caught. There was no point trying to act strong. Not here. Not with her.

"I do," I said, and the words cracked on the way out. "I really, really do."

The tears came before I could stop them—hot, sudden, and somehow heavier than any I'd cried before. I stumbled forward, and she caught me instantly, wrapping me up like she'd been waiting for this moment since the second I was born. Her arms felt like home. Like safety. Like something ancient and unconditional.

"I'm getting a divorce," I whispered, and even saying it felt like ripping something out of me.

She didn't flinch. Didn't tense. She just held me tighter, like she could protect me from the weight of the word by sheer will. No questions. No judgment. Just her—calm, warm, solid. A mother's love that didn't require explanations.

Behind us, I heard the scrape of Dad's shoe on the floor, followed by a very deliberate sigh.
"Well," he said in his usual dry tone, "I never liked the bloke."

"Joseph," Mom said, half reprimanding, half smiling.

"What?" he replied, hands already in the air like he was under oath in a courtroom drama. "I'm just saying what we're all thinking. The man's got the emotional depth of a damp sponge. Cold, calculating, zero warmth—he hugs like he's submitting a tax return. No eye contact, minimal effort, and he always looks like he's expecting a receipt afterward."

He shook his head and gave an exaggerated shiver. "Honestly, hugging him was like trying to get affection from a fax machine. I've seen warmer embraces from airport security."

"Joseph," Mom warned again, though this time she was trying not to smile.

He waved her off. "I'm not being mean, I'm being accurate. The man's emotionally constipated. You ever seen him try to express empathy? It's like watching someone try to do algebra in the middle of a stroke."

He glanced back at me, voice softening just a little beneath the sarcasm. "You didn't need that, kid. You need someone who feels things. Who actually knows how to show up for you. Not... corporate Ken doll over there playing husband."

Dad let out a breath, one hand on his hip, the other still mid-rant. "God knows why you ever fell in love with him in the first place. You fell so hard, so openly for him" Dad continued, "and apparently he turned out to be... well, an emotionally lobotomized tax consultant in disguise."

I laughed through a sniffle, but it hurt. Because he wasn't wrong. I blinked fast. "I think some part of me's still that girl," I admitted. "The one who fell in love too fast and never figured out how to fall out."

He nodded, stepping forward to place a firm, fatherly hand on my shoulder.

"Then it's about time you let her grow up, sweetheart," he said.

Mom made a soft noise of agreement behind us, and for the first time in a long while, I didn't feel embarrassed about crying in front of them. Because they saw me.

The girl I was. And the woman I was trying to become.

Dad pointed toward the kitchen.

"I'll make tea. Unless you need something stronger. In which case, I've still got that awful limoncello your uncle gave me."

Mom rolled her eyes with a sigh of affection. "Joseph, now is not the time."

"It's always the time for limoncello," he muttered, already rummaging in the cabinets.

I looked at both of them—my mother, who never let go, and my father, who loved like a grumbling lighthouse: rough, steady, and always there whether you saw it or not. My heart hurt, but it also felt stitched together in a way it hadn't in months. Maybe years.

"I missed you both," I said softly, voice still raw.

Mom brushed my hair back behind my ear, her palm warm against my cheek. "We missed you too, baby."

"We're not going anywhere," Dad added from the kitchen, raising his voice over the clink of glasses. "Even if you keep marrying idiots."

I laughed through a tear that spilled anyway.

And in that small, cluttered kitchen with the hum of the kettle and the lemon-sweet sting of memory in the air, I let myself collapse. Not in defeat—but in relief. In safety. In something that felt like beginning again.

Maybe everything had fallen apart. But I wasn't alone in the rubble. Not anymore.

We sat around the kitchen table, a mismatched trio of mugs between us—tea steeping, steam curling like quiet prayers into the air. Mom and Dad sat across from me, elbow on the table, fingers drumming, waiting. Their eyes hadn't left my face since I started talking.

And I did talk.  About everything.

From the missed dinners to the cold silences, the gaslighting moments I brushed off, the party, the lies, the voice on the phone that still echoed in my head—Laura, purring like she owned a piece of my life.

When I finished, the room went very, very still. No one spoke for a beat. The kind of silence that buzzes in your bones.

Then Dad stood abruptly.I blinked. "Where are you going?"

He didn't answer at first—just picked up his phone from the counter and slipped his car keys into his coat pocket.

"Dad?"

Mom looked up from her tea, confused. "Joseph?"

"I'll be back soon," he said, already heading for the door. "Judy, stay here with our daughter."

"Dad, no," I said quickly, heart thudding. "Please. Don't."

He paused at the door, stepped back just long enough to lean in and kiss my forehead, warm and certain. "Don't worry, sweetheart," he said quietly. "There's something I need to take care of."

My stomach dropped. "Oh God." He didn't reply, just offered that maddeningly calm half-smile of his. The one that usually meant something explosive was on its way.

Then he was gone. The door closed behind him with a soft click that sounded too final.

I turned to Mom, wide-eyed. She just sighed, sipping her tea, unfazed.

"Well. I hope that son of a bitch has life insurance."