Chapter 8
Home for dinner tonight? I thought I’d grill.
I stared at his message.
How many times had I sent him nearly the same thing?
Should I make dinner?
Will you be home?
Do you want me to wait?
For years, his answers had been vague.
Probably.
Not sure.
Busy day.
Don’t plan around me.
Now Mark was planning around me.
I typed one sentence.
I have plans.
Three dots appeared immediately.
Plans?
Yes.
With who?
I stared at the screen.
Then I put the phone down.
My plan was embarrassingly simple.
I wanted to go to a bookstore, buy coffee, and sit somewhere nobody expected anything from me.
I had spent so much of my life arranging myself around Mark’s schedule that being unavailable for one evening felt almost rebellious.
At five thirty, he called.
I let it ring twice before answering.
“Hi.”
“Hey. What plans do you have?”
I looked at myself in the hallway mirror.
“Why?”
“I’m just asking.”
“You used to hate when I asked questions like that.”
“This is different.”
“How?”
Silence.
Then irritation.
“Claire, what is going on?”
“I told you. I’m going out.”
“Are you meeting somebody?”
The absurdity of it hit me so hard I almost laughed.
“Mark.”
“What?”
“Listen to yourself.”
He went quiet.
I could hear voices in the background at his office.
“Are you doing this on purpose?”
“No.”
“Then tell me what’s wrong.”
For eighteen months, I had begged him to notice.
Now he wanted an answer on demand.
“I’ll see you later.”
I ended the call.
The bookstore was almost empty.
I ordered coffee and sat near a window with a novel open in front of me.
I read the same page three times.
My thoughts kept returning to one question.
How long had I known?
Not factually.
Instinctively.
I remembered a Tuesday eight months earlier when Mark came home at almost one in the morning.
I had been sitting in the kitchen.
The lamp was on.
His phone was in his hand.
“You’re still awake?” he had asked.
“I was worried.”
“You don’t need to monitor me.”
“I wasn’t monitoring you.”
“It feels like it.”
I remembered the shame that had burned through me.
“I’m sorry.”
He had sighed as though forgiving me was exhausting.
Then he had kissed my forehead and gone upstairs.
I closed my eyes in the bookstore.
I had apologized.
That memory hurt more than the perfume.