Page 7 of The Messengers of Magic

Chapter Five

I t had only been twelve hours since Adelaide Benson’s life shattered into a thousand pieces.

Her husband, Jeff, had come home during his lunch break on Friday afternoon while she was at work, packed some clothes, and left her a note on the kitchen table.

Along with a stack of divorce papers. He had left her for his assistant, Stephanie Clark.

She should have seen it coming. The signs had all been there: late nights at the office, too many “work trips” to London over the past few months, and a growing distance she hadn’t wanted to name. But after nine years of marriage, it had completely blindsided her.

Adelaide had silenced the whispers of doubt floating in her head, dismissing them as paranoia.

There was no way Jeff would be so brazen as to cheat on her with his assistant.

That kind of shit only happened in books, not in real life.

But here she was; her life had fallen into the depths of an all-too-familiar trope, casting her as the pitiful wife weeping over a clichéd breakup letter in her kitchen.

In it, Jeff declared his love for Stephanie, the pretty young blonde she’d met numerous times at his office.

She’d even baked her cookies at Christmas.

In that painful moment, Adelaide couldn’t help but feel like a side character in her own life, destined to play the role of the forsaken spouse in someone else’s love story.

She had known theirs wasn’t the happiest of marriages, not finding much in common as they matured, but she’d believed he still loved her, as she did him.

It might not have been the passionate, all-consuming love of their teenage years, but wasn’t that the way of marriage?

It softened, settled, grew quieter with time.

They’d tied the knot straight out of uni, ignoring her mother’s pleas to wait. That summer, just after she turned twenty-one, they eloped. If her mother were alive today, she would have looked to the heavens and muttered, This is precisely why you should always listen to your mother.

But maybe her mother had been right about more than just Jeff. Maybe she’d been right about Adelaide never quite knowing how to stand on her own, always leaning too heavily on a man. It had been easier to settle into the life Jeff provided than to carve out something for herself.

Now, at nearly thirty, Adelaide found herself sitting alone at the kitchen table, her gaze fixed on Jeff’s note.

She still couldn’t believe he’d ended their marriage with a letter.

A coward’s way out , she thought. She picked it up again, trying to read it, but her tears kept blurring the words, forcing her to start over.

I need passion. Someone who challenges me, who keeps me on my toes. Someone with drive, who knows exactly where they’re going and what they want in life.

That was as far as she ever got before the ache in her chest became too much. Eventually, she gave up and cried herself to sleep.

The next morning, she shuffled into the bathroom and flicked on the light.

Her reflection stared back, puffy eyes, tear-stained cheeks.

The headache that throbbed behind her temple could rival even the worst of her teenage hangovers.

But none of it dulled the rage boiling inside her.

As the sun rose, she found herself dragging the belongings Jeff had left behind out into the garden to burn.

She started with the easy things: his clothes, his pillow, every last pair of his loafers.

Then she moved on to bigger, more expensive items, his golf clubs, his carefully painted model airplanes, his records, that smug little new stack of cassette tapes he’d brought back from London last week, still in their Woolworths bag.

Then she hauled out his new prized stereo system, giant speakers and all, and tossed them onto the pile.

Every item that hit the flames felt like shedding another layer of the life she’d built around Jeff, instead of one she’d built for herself.

The truth was, she had relied on him, not just for love, but for stability.

He had the career. He had the plan. And she’d molded herself into what he had wanted her to be, the perfect wife.

And now, without him, she was nothing, had nothing, no security net to catch her. How had she been so stupid, so naive?

Once she started, she couldn’t stop. She dragged out her own belongings next.

Her wedding dress went first. Then half her closet, dresses, tops, shoes, she’d worn because he liked them, not because she did.

She didn’t want any of it. No reminders.

No keepsakes. It was best if she destroyed it all. Better to leave nothing behind.

She stood as all traces of the life she once had went up in flames, literally and metaphorically.

It was exhilarating, even freeing, as she watched the sparks from what had once been her favorite end table reach high above the treetops.

A horrible stench lingered in the smoke billowing from the pile, and she coughed, eyes watering.

The smell, noxious as it was, felt fitting.

It mirrored how she felt about her life, rancid and ruined.

The last to go were their photos, starting with their wedding album; she tossed it into the hungry fire without a second glance. One by one, the memories burned, curling at the edges, turning to ash.

She sank onto the grass, watching as the flames devoured everything that had once made their house a home. But soon the rising wail of sirens in the distance jolted her back to reality.

The fire brigade burst through the side gate minutes later, boots thudding against the path, hoses uncoiling behind them as they shouted over one another, expecting to find the back of the house engulfed in flames.

But when they reached the garden and saw it was just a bonfire of memories, their tone shifted, first relieved, then sharp with annoyance.

“You can’t just set a fire like that, love. Not in a residential area. You’re lucky no one’s called the council.”

She tried to answer back, but the smoke caught at the back of her throat, bitter and thick, and instead she just nodded in compliance.

One of them turned the hose on the smoldering heap, steam rising in angry hisses, leaving her old life nothing more than a pile of smoldering muddy black ash with bits of half-burned things she used to love. It was fitting, she thought.

After they left, she went inside and packed what little clothing she hadn’t burned, a photo of her parents, a few of her favorite paperbacks, a toothbrush, then headed out the door, not bothering to close it behind her.

She never wanted to set foot in their house again.

If someone decided to loot it, let them.

The first thing she did was stop at Brightwood Bank and drain their joint savings account. It was her inheritance, left to her in her mother’s will, and there was no way she was going to let him have even a penny of it.

After that, everything blurred. She was on autopilot, having no idea where she was going, only knowing she needed to get away. So, she took the motorway and drove aimlessly, her mind reeling with everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours.

How had she been so stupid?

She’d known, deep down, that something wasn’t right.

He’d started dressing better, bought a new car, and even started using some overpriced hair growth tonic for the thinning patch on the crown of his head.

The signs were all there. But she’d ignored them, just as Jeff had told her to do.

You’re overthinking again, Adelaide. You always do.

And she’d believed him.

Amy, her best friend and coworker at the Ladd Library, had warned her years ago, after catching Jeff flirting with a young blonde at the annual library banquet.

Adelaide had brushed it off at the time, thinking all men did things like that.

Now she wondered how many women had come before Stephanie Clark.

The idea made her stomach churn. She gripped the steering wheel, suddenly lightheaded, and felt as if she might actually throw up.

Pulling off the road at the next service exit, she stopped at a small petrol station tucked behind the lorry bays.

She filled her tank, then walked over to a phone box to call Amy; she didn’t want her to worry.

By now, Amy surely would have noticed her absence from work.

It was already afternoon, and she hadn’t shown up.

Adelaide was always punctual and rarely called out sick; disappearing like this would have Amy worried.

But she wasn’t ready to talk about what had happened.

Not with anyone. Instead, she rang the archive line that went straight to a message machine. It was easier that way.

“Hey, Amy, I’m going to be out for the rest of the week, can you please cover for me. Sorry for the late notice. Will call you in a few days and explain.”

Even though Glastonbury wasn’t exactly a small town, she knew that by mid-afternoon, word of the fire, and Jeff leaving her, would have reached Amy via her and Jeff’s mutual friends. She’d have to call her back later, once she had her mind sorted out and this damn headache was gone.

She paid for the petrol, grabbed a bottle of Coke, climbed into her old Volkswagen Golf, and pulled back onto the motorway.

The sun sat starkly behind a thick blanket of clouds, which was not abnormal for England in the late-summer months, but today it felt more dreary and dark than normal.

Adelaide turned on the radio and began twisting the dial, searching for something to drown out her thoughts.

Yet, it seemed like every station was playing nothing but love songs.

Come to think of it, she wasn’t sure there were any songs that weren’t about love, in one way or another.

Either wanting it, having it, or losing it.

She stopped when she heard the opening riff of one of her favorite bands, Def Leppard. “Love Bites.” It felt fitting. She cranked up the volume, despite her lingering headache, and screamed the lyrics at the top of her lungs.

Once the song ended and U2’s “With or Without You” came on, she promptly turned the radio off and drove in silence.

She chewed on her thumbnail, lost in the labyrinth of her thoughts, as she traveled further on the unfamiliar road.

She hadn’t been paying much attention to where she was going, her mind too tangled in what came next, what her future would hold without Jeff.

She had no plan. No map. No idea how to navigate the chaos of her shattered life. All she could do was keep driving, feeling utterly adrift in a world suddenly devoid of the stability she once knew.

When the digital clock on the dashboard read quarter past seven, the harsh reality of her situation hit her. She’d fled in a daze of anger, sadness, and betrayal, leaving without a word to anyone about what had happened or where she was going.

When she saw the Welcome to Scotland sign, a strange kind of relief washed over her. Crossing into another country felt like crossing some invisible threshold, one that put distance, real, physical distance between herself and the mess she’d left behind.

But the feeling didn’t last.

With each mile, the weight slowly crept back in. She still had no destination, only the compulsion to keep moving away from her old life. And now, after hours on the road, the petrol gauge was edging toward empty again.

She began scanning for a place to stop for the night as her car coasted into a small village, dotted with modest stone houses and lichen-covered stone walls.

A flicker of recognition tugged at her as she drove on.

It wasn’t until she saw the sign, Helensburgh , that she realized where she was.

This wasn’t random. This was where her subconscious had been leading her all along.