Chapter 7
I nodded toward the suitcases.
"I packed my clothes and rented an apartment."
I held his eyes.
"The only person calling this drama is you."
He had no answer.
Lauren moved farther away.
Martin pressed the elevator button.
Adrian's expression shifted.
He saw the car waiting downstairs through the floor-to-ceiling windows at the end of the corridor.
He saw that my things were packed.
He saw the forwarding form.
He saw the exact thing he had trained himself to believe I would never do.
Leave.
"When are you coming back?"
"I'm not."
His face tightened.
"You're seriously ending six years over a weekend?"
"No."
I stepped into the elevator.
"I'm ending six years because you spent the last year teaching me that staying married to you required me to stop respecting myself."
The doors began to close.
His hand shot between them.
They reopened.
"Natalie."
There was panic in his voice now.
Real panic.
It would once have mattered to me.
I had spent months begging for evidence that he understood what he was doing to us.
Now that evidence arrived too late.
"What?" I asked.
He looked behind him.
At Lauren.
At Martin.
Back at me.
Whatever sentence he had imagined disappeared.
He had probably expected to say we should talk later.
Or that I was overreacting.
Or that he loved me.
Perhaps even that nothing was happening.
But there was Lauren with an overnight bag.
Some lies collapse under the weight of luggage.
Finally he said, "Don't do anything permanent tonight."
I looked at him.
"I already did."
Then Martin pressed the lobby button.
This time, Adrian didn't stop the doors.
As the elevator descended, my knees began to shake.
Martin pretended not to notice.
At the twelfth floor, he said quietly, "Your car's at the north entrance."
"Thank you."
At the seventh, I started crying.
Not loudly.
Tears simply began falling.
I wiped them away with the heel of my hand.
Martin kept his eyes on the illuminated numbers.
When we reached the lobby, he pushed the luggage cart outside.
The marina was bright with the last gold light of early evening.
People were walking dogs along the promenade.
A couple sat on a bench eating ice cream.
A sailboat moved slowly toward its slip.
The world had the indecency to continue.
Martin loaded my suitcases into the trunk.
Before closing it, he looked at me.
"Mrs. Mercer."