Chapter 15
“I can tell you what happened.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
He sat again.
For a long time, neither of us spoke.
Then Mark said something I did not expect.
“It was easy.”
I looked at him.
His voice was low.
“Not the lying. Not any of this. I mean… being there.”
“Why?”
“Because she didn’t know me.”
I frowned.
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“It does to me.”
He rubbed his hands together.
“She didn’t know every mistake I’d ever made. She didn’t know what I was like when I was tired or angry. She didn’t know what bills were due or what needed fixing in the house. Nothing was ordinary.”
I listened despite myself.
“With her, I didn’t feel…”
He stopped.
“What?”
“Old.”
The word hung there.
Mark was fifty.
So was I.
For a second, anger surged through me.
“So you felt old and decided I deserved to be lied to?”
“No.”
“You understand how pathetic that sounds?”
“Yes.”
He looked at the floor.
“I’m not asking you to understand it.”
“Good.”
“I’m telling you because you asked why.”
I studied him.
There it was.
Not a grand romance.
Not some irresistible force.
Not destiny.
Escape.
He had traded honesty for the temporary feeling of being someone without history.
And I had been made to pay for it.
“You know what I felt?” I asked.
Mark looked at me.
“I felt old too.”
His eyes filled again.
“I looked in the mirror and wondered if you had stopped wanting me.”
“Claire…”
“I wondered whether I talked too much. Whether I complained too much. Whether I had become boring. Whether I should dress differently. Whether I needed to lose weight. Whether I needed hobbies. Whether I needed to give you more space.”
He shut his eyes.
“You went looking for a place where you didn’t feel old. And then you came home and made me feel like I was disappearing.”
“I’m sorry.”
“So am I.”
He looked at me quickly.
I think he heard hope in the words.
There wasn’t any.
“I’m sorry I believed you instead of myself.”
Mark’s face went still.
I stood.
“Where are you going?”
“Upstairs.”
“Claire, please.”
“I can’t do this anymore tonight.”
“We need to talk.”
“We have been talking.”
“No. I mean about us.”
I stared at him.
“That is what we’ve been talking about.”
“I mean what happens now.”
For years, Mark had controlled the timing.