Chapter 20
Both of us laughing.
No Lauren.
No suspicion.
No forwarding forms.
Just two people who had once been good together.
Grief rose suddenly.
I sat down on one of the remaining boxes.
Adrian noticed.
"You okay?"
"Yes."
He stayed several feet away.
That mattered.
The old Adrian might have touched me because he needed to feel useful.
This version waited.
I ran my thumb over the chipped ceramic.
"We really were happy here."
"Yeah."
"I don't want to pretend we weren't."
His eyes filled.
"Neither do I."
I looked at him.
"Sometimes I think people assume divorce means the whole marriage was a mistake."
He sat on the opposite side of the room.
"I don't."
"Neither do I."
The words seemed to surprise him.
I continued.
"You were good to me for a long time."
He looked down.
"Until I wasn't."
"Yes."
He inhaled.
"I wish the good years were enough to cancel the bad one."
"So do I."
"Do you?"
"Of course."
I looked at the sailboat.
"Do you think I wanted to rebuild my life at forty because my husband lost his mind over a coworker?"
He gave a pained laugh.
"Fair."
"I wanted our marriage."
The room went quiet.
I had never said it that plainly since leaving.
Adrian looked at me.
"Then why can't we try?"
Because I wanted the marriage.
Not this one.
The answer came so quickly inside me that I almost said it without thinking.
Instead, I took a breath.
"When I left, I still loved you enough that I was terrified I would come back."
His face changed.
"Really?"
"Yes."
"Why didn't you?"
"Because I knew love wasn't the only question anymore."
He listened.
"I had to ask whether I trusted you. Whether I felt safe telling you what I saw. Whether I respected who I was around you. Whether I wanted to spend the next ten years wondering if every difficult season would make you disappear into someone else's attention."
Adrian stared at the floor.
"I could prove it wouldn't."
"Maybe."
I meant that sincerely.
People can change.
I had watched him change in small ways already.
He no longer blamed Lauren.
He no longer called my leaving an overreaction.
He had stopped trying to use therapy as evidence that I owed him another chance.
He had begun doing something much harder than apologizing.
He had begun accepting consequences.
"But if you changed completely," I said, "I still wouldn't owe you the marriage back."