Her friend laughed over the phone, “Langdon! I saw him in the flower shop a few days ago, getting a big bouquet of sunflowers. I didn’t think it was him at first—I know you don’t like sunflowers that much, but hey. If our husbands knew everything, then we probably wouldn’t get apology bouquets.” 

Abby forced a chuckle, “You can say that again. Listen, Hannah—I think Penny is waking up from her nap, so I have to go. I’ll call you later.”

She hung up the phone, feeling dazed. Because Hannah was right—Abby didn’t like sunflowers. It took her back to being sixteen, standing in the foyer of her home with the sounds of her father and childhood nanny echoing from upstairs. Her parents’ wedding photo stared at her. In the following days and weeks, her father showered her with gifts and sunflowers in an attempt to buy her silence. Abby had been given enough sunflowers to last a lifetime. 

And Frank knew this. 

In their entire relationship, Frank had never bought her sunflowers. In the beginning, there were roses, which turned into lush peonies, and then tulips after Tanner was born. It didn’t matter what kind of flowers it was, but Frank never bought her sunflowers.

And despite what Hannah said, he still had never bought her sunflowers. 

Hell, he hadn’t bought her flowers in months. But with their conversations stilted, only focused on the kids and Frank’s schedule and his NA meetings and appointments—Abby stopped expecting anything. She was used to the silence. 

Abby padded over to the large calendar hanging near the garage door. Frank’s color-coded shifts mocked her. He was on the mid-day swing schedule, making it nearly impossible for Abby to get anything done when he was distracting the kids in the morning and sweeping in right before bedtime, riling them back up.

Abby was exhausted. She deserved flowers, goddamn it. Just not sunflowers. 

She knew who did like sunflowers. Who, the one time Abby met her, wore a soft butter yellow shirt, and looked like the sun herself. Whose presence highlighted all the ways Frank and Abby had grown apart, who seemed more at ease standing next to her husband than Abby herself. Even though Abby had the ring, the house, the kids, the stupid dog—who brought out all of her insecurities. 

With shaky hands, Abby pulled up Frank’s barely used Instagram page. She clicked through his following list, clicked on her page, and—