Paige: The Attempt

It had been three months since Ellie saw the texts. Three months since the world had fractured, silently, from the inside.

For Paige, it was three months of performing normalcy. She compartmentalized the secret, pushing it down, focusing on work, on logistics, on being the “good” wife and mother. She told herself it was over. She had ended it with Daniel. It was a clean, professional break. She had chosen her family.

But the house knew. The silence knew.

The kind of silence that settled between them at dinner, or in the pause before one of them said goodnight, only to roll over and leave a chasm of distance between them. Silences that used to feel comfortable now sat heavy in the air, full of things neither of them wanted to name.

And the kids felt it most.

Ellie, with her sharp eyes, had been watching. She’d seen the texts, and now she saw the cracks. She tried to fill them. She loaded the dishwasher without being asked. She made sure Cal had his jersey on game days. She became a small, anxious parent, trying to patch over what only adults should fix.

And Cal, sweet, silly Cal, began to withdraw. His small pranks faded. His jokes softened into silence. He still smiled, but he watched his parents like people watch the weather when they do not trust the sky.

Rowan saw his children struggling and couldn’t find the blueprint for the fix. He saw Ellie’s worry and Cal’s withdrawal, and he thought the problem was him. He kept trying to “repair,” cooking their favorite dinners, suggesting family movie nights, trying to pull them all back together. But he was trying to fix a foundation when the crack was somewhere else entirely.

The end of the secret came on a Tuesday. Rowan had found Ellie in her room, crying quietly over a math problem she couldn’t solve.

“Hey, El,” he’d said gently, sitting on the edge of her bed. “It’s just math. We can figure it out.”

Ellie just shook her head, the tears coming faster. “It’s not the math.”

Rowan’s heart tightened. “What is it, honey? You can tell me. You’re… you’ve all been so quiet lately. Is it me?”

And Ellie, a child who had been “patching over” adult problems for three months, finally broke.

“It’s Mom,” she whispered, her voice cracking. “And that man. Daniel. I saw the texts on the iPad. A long time ago. I… I didn’t want to make it worse.”

The words landed. It was the “irreparable break” he’d carried his whole life. Not the affair. But that his kids had known. That they had carried the weight of the secret, whispering between themselves, protecting him.

His reaction wasn’t rage. Not at first. It was a deep, profound, crushing sorrow. The same “crumbling” he’d watched his father do. He swore he’d never put his kids through that.

That night, he confronted Paige. His voice was calm, but all the warmth was gone from it. It was the voice of a man whose trust had not just been broken, but detonated.

“Ellie told me,” he said, not looking at her. “About Daniel. How long have they known?”

Paige’s entire “performance” shattered. The blood drained from her face. This was the discovery. Not just that he knew, but how he knew.

Maybe it would have been easier for Paige if there had been yelling, slammed doors, fists through walls, the kind of noise that matched the damage.

Something she could point to and say there, that’s why.

But that wasn’t Rowan.
Rowan was calm. Steady. Reliable.

For him, the answer to pain was repair.
He wasn’t going to let his family slip through his fingers.

He’d watched his father crumble after his mother’s death. He’d seen what grief did when no one named it.
Crumbling wasn’t an option for Rowan.

So there was counseling.
Scheduled dinners.
Awkward attempts at conversation that felt stilted and jarring.

They followed the steps. Checked the boxes.
Tried to make something broken look like something healing.

Paige told herself that this was what good people did. She told herself that failure wasn’t an option. She sat in the therapist’s office and recited sentences that sounded reasonable. She cut up carrots for a roast and asked about Ellie’s chem quiz and Cal’s reading log and made sure the kitchen was clean before bed.

She did not cry in the shower. She did not confess to the mirror. She did not permit herself to think about the truth for more than a second at a time. If a flicker rose, she pushed it down.

This was a test. She would pass it.

And all the while, Paige felt herself disappearing beneath his gaze.

He meant well. He was trying. But his steadiness, his goodness, only made her feel more contained.
It reminded her of the way she’d once felt seen by Daniel, not because he fixed her, but because he noticed her.

Rowan was good. Kind.
She had a life with him, with Ellie and Cal, that most people dreamed about.

The lights were warm. The floors polished. The windows looked like magazine photographs brought to life. There was a stand mixer in a color she had chosen on purpose, a fruit bowl that always had oranges because the kids liked them.

There was a coffee table she’d wanted to replace because of a hairline crack. Rowan had glued it last winder. If you ran your thumb along the edge, you could feel where the wood did not quite meet. Close, but not flush. Repaired, but not the same.

Inside that dream, she felt the walls closing in tighter, and tighter,
until even her own reflection began to look like someone else’s life.

It built slowly. Not in arguments, but in silences.

Rowan’s smile, always so easy to come by, changed. It was still there, but strained at the edges. He kept cooking dinner and paying the bills and texting Paige reminders that were kind. He kept choosing the right thing. He kept being good.

The night it ended wasn’t special. There was no storm outside. The kids had gone to bed and the dishwasher hummed with a steady rhythm that she usually found calming. Rowan sat across from her at the kitchen table.

The silence so loud it was heavy. Pressing down on them until one was forced to speak the truth out loud.

“I don’t think we’re fixing it,” he said. His voice was quiet, but certain.

Paige looked up from her untouched glass of wine to meet his eyes. He didn’t sound angry. Just tired. And in the set of his jaw, the muscle clenching there, she could tell that it pained him to say this. To admit this truth.

“We’ve tried,” she said. She wanted to mean it. Maybe she did.

“We did,” he agreed. “But I don’t think either of us wants this version of trying anymore.”

The steadiness in his tone unnerved her. more than any shout could have. It was the sound of someone telling the truth. Saying something she knew he’d never wanted to say.

She swallowed. Something pricked the back of her throat. She thought of the therapist’s questions. What do you want. What would it look like if you had it. She could not say any of it. The truest answer was not fit for this room. The truest answer was a shadow in the corner, held down by her hands.

“I don’t want to fail you,” she said softly.
He shook his head. “You didn’t…” he hesitated, then said the part that mattered. “You just… Left before I knew you were gone.”

That landed somewhere deep in her chest, sharp and merciless. She knew it was true.

He reached across the table, his fingers brushing the edge of her hand, not to take it. Just to touch it, one last time. They were the hands of a man who built things that lasted. She had loved those hands for that reason. She still did.

They’d known each other for fifteen years.
Met at a friend’s dinner party, both pretending to have more direction than they really did. She had been twenty-four and furious with her parents in the polite way that looks like ambition. He had admired the steel in her spine, told her he loved that she would never fall apart. She had believed him. She had also learned that not falling apart can look like not moving at all.

And for a while, she believed him.

But now, sitting here, she wondered if that was what had doomed them from the start. She’d put on strength as a survival strategy, and he’d fallen for the armor.

“I’ll stay close,” he said. “For the kids. For all of it. You don’t have to leave this house.”

She nodded, though she wasn’t sure why.
The house was beautiful. Expansive. Perfect.
It had everything she thought she’d wanted.
The picture she’d grown up believing was accomplishment.

“I think we should talk to the kids tomorrow,” he added quietly. “Together.”

She nodded again, eyes fixed on the table. Her reflection in the window looked like a picture of a woman who made sensible choices.

“Paige,” he said gently. When she didn’t look up, he said her name again, firmer this time.

When she finally met his eye, she felt the tremor she’d been holding back. He held her there and did not look away.

“I know you’re trying to disappear,” he said. “But you’re still here. And I’m not going to let you forget that.”

The words broke something in her.
He wasn’t angry. He wasn’t cruel. He was simple right.

And he knew her.

She opened her mouth, but no words came, only the tremor of something between shame and longing.

He stood then, gathering his jacket. The cedar from the shop clung to the fabric. The scent had always meant safety to her. Tonight it meant loss.

“Rowan,” she whispered, thought didn’t know what she meant to say after his name. Wait. Stay. I’m sorry. None of it would fix anything.

He paused in the doorway.
For a heartbeat, she thought he might turn back, and some desperate part of her wanted him to make the decision for both of them. That would be easier. He did not.

But instead, he said softly,

“We’ll do this together, Paige. All of it,” a pause. “I’ll be at my dad’s.”

He started to turn to go again and then added, so quiet she had to strain to hear, “Don’t keep punishing yourself.”

Her throat tightened. “You don’t understand. I still…”
He waited. When she didn’t finish, he said, “I do. That’s the hardest part.”

She looked up then, eyes glassy, feeling the confession break free. A part of her wanted to push him away. For him to know how terrible she truly was. “The wanting. The way it’s still in me. I don’t know how to stop it.”

He exhaled slowly, like the sound cost him something. “You will. Or you won’t. But don’t let it be the only thing that defines you.”

He gave her a faint smile. Half grief, half love.

There it was again. His refusal to let pain be the final word. Repair, even now. It should have comforted her. It pressed on her instead.

Then he was gone.

Paige sat in the silence he left behind, the scent of cedar already thinning in the air.
The house felt enormous, echoing with the versions of herself she’d built to keep from breaking.

And she hated, that even now after everything, a part of her still ached for both men, and the different ways they’d both made her feel seen.

The house listened with her. The silence did not crack. She stayed where she was and did not move. She did not crumble. She did not disappear.

She sat with the life she had, and the life she could no longer pretend was the only one she wanted, and the shame that came with both.

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New here? This you can start Paige’s Story from the beginning.

Continue Paige’s Story with Part 4: The Truth.

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Want to read about the woman who built a new life with Rowan? Read Mira’s Story.

Want to read about the “strong friend” Paige’s mirror helped shatter? Read Halley’s Story.