Chapter 5
I took the form into the elevator.
On the twenty-third floor, I stood outside Unit 2304 for several seconds before unlocking the door.
Everything looked normal.
That was the terrible part.
Adrian's navy jacket was hanging over the back of a dining chair.
Two mugs sat beside the espresso machine.
A bowl of green apples was on the kitchen island because I had bought them the previous Sunday, as I did almost every week.
His running shoes were near the balcony door.
My book was still open facedown on the sofa.
A marriage could be dying and still leave laundry to fold.
It could still have groceries.
Still have toothpaste lined up beside a sink.
Still have one person asking whether the dishwasher had been emptied.
I walked into the bedroom.
For the first ten minutes, I couldn't decide what to take.
Then I stopped thinking like a wife leaving a marriage and started thinking like a woman moving into an apartment.
Clothes.
Shoes.
Work things.
Passport.
Birth certificate.
Financial records.
Medication.
Jewelry my grandmother had left me.
The framed photograph of Emily and me with our mother before she died.
The shoebox containing family Christmas cards and the birthday notes my father had written before his stroke made handwriting difficult.
I opened the bedside drawer and saw the stack of letters Adrian had written while we were dating.
I picked them up.
For a moment, I thought I would take them.
Then I put them back.
I didn't need evidence that he had once loved me.
I knew he had.
That was not the question anymore.
At four twelve, my phone buzzed.
Did you see my message?
I kept packing.
At four twenty-six:
Natalie?
At four thirty-eight:
I'm trying to handle this like adults.
That one stopped me.
I sat on the edge of the bed with one of my sweaters in my lap.
Handle this like adults.
As though maturity meant cooperating with my own humiliation.
As though adulthood required me to make the guest room comfortable for the woman my husband had been sleeping with.
I typed three words.
I saw it.
Then I deleted them without sending.
At four fifty-nine, another message appeared.
Lauren is uncomfortable with the situation too.
I laughed.
One small sound.
It surprised me so much that I covered my mouth.
Poor Lauren.
Uncomfortable about staying in another woman's home.
I wondered whether she had asked him what would happen if I were there.