Chapter 17
“I need space today.”
He nodded.
“I’ll be here.”
“That’s your choice.”
I left.
I drove without deciding where to go.
Eventually I parked near the same bookstore I had visited the previous week.
This time I did not enter.
I sat in my car with both hands around my coffee.
I should have felt victorious.
I had been right.
Every instinct I had doubted had been correct.
But being right about something terrible is not a victory.
I wanted to call someone.
Then I realized I did not know what to say.
For years, I had protected our marriage in conversations with other people.
When Mark missed dinners, I said work was busy.
When he skipped gatherings, I said he was exhausted.
When someone joked that I was practically single on weeknights, I laughed.
I had helped maintain the public version of us because I believed the private version could still be repaired.
Now I felt strangely embarrassed.
Not because Mark had cheated.
Because I had defended him.
Then I remembered what I had said to myself the night I found the message.
Wherever Mark was, he had chosen to be there.
The same was true of me.
I had chosen to trust my husband.
That was not shameful.
What he did with that trust belonged to him.
I sat in the car until my coffee went cold.
When I returned home that afternoon, Mark was vacuuming the living room.
I stood in the doorway.
He switched it off.
“I didn’t know what else to do.”
That sentence nearly broke my heart.
For twenty-two years, this had been his house too.
Yet now he moved through it like a guest hoping to earn permission to stay.
There were dishes drying beside the sink.
Laundry folded on the couch.
The trash had been taken out.
Every chore I had ever wished he would notice had suddenly become visible.
“Mark.”
He waited.
“You don’t have to perform.”
“I’m not.”
“Yes, you are.”
He looked down.
“I’m trying.”
“I know.”
“Isn’t that what you wanted?”
There was no accusation in his voice.
That made it worse.
“Yes,” I said. “A year ago.”
He sat on the arm of the couch.
“Tell me what to do now.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
“Because then I’m still responsible for fixing this.”
“You’re not.”
“If I have to give you instructions, I am.”
His eyes reddened.
“I don’t know how to repair something this big.”