Chapter 15
But I did not trust the man across from me with my peace.
Sometimes love survives after a relationship no longer should.
“I don’t want to live the way I lived with you,” I said.
He looked away.
I continued.
“I spent months wondering whether you were coming home. Then I spent months wondering whether I was imagining what was obvious. Then I started wondering what was wrong with me that you preferred being somewhere else.”
“Nothing was wrong with you.”
“I know that now.”
His eyes filled.
That almost broke me.
Almost.
Nathan had rarely cried in eleven years.
I wanted to reach across the table.
I wanted to put my hand over his because comforting him was muscle memory.
Instead, I wrapped both hands around my own coffee.
We sat in silence.
Finally, he whispered, “I wish you hated me.”
“Why?”
“Because this is worse.”
He was right.
Anger might have implied connection.
Instead, I felt grief and tenderness and distance.
When we left the café, Nathan walked me to my car.
He stood beside the driver’s door exactly as he had the night I left.
“Do you remember what you said in the driveway?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Somewhere you don’t have to wonder whether your husband is coming home.”
“Yes.”
He looked toward the apartment building behind me.
“Did you find it?”
I thought about my small kitchen.
My rattling bathroom fan.
The sunlight.
The yellow bowl.
My mother’s photograph.
The evenings when I read until midnight without checking my phone.
“Yes,” I said.
Nathan nodded.
For the first time, he did not ask me to come back.
Chapter 5: The light I left on for myself
Three months after I left, I returned to the house one final time.
Nathan had decided to sell.
I hadn’t asked him to.
He said the rooms felt wrong now.
We had agreed that I would come by for a few remaining boxes from the attic and sign a document related to the realtor.
I chose Saturday afternoon.
Then a storm delayed traffic across town, and by the time I reached the neighborhood, it was almost eleven-thirty at night.
The driveway looked exactly as it had the night I left.
For a moment, I sat inside my car.
Rain tapped softly against the windshield.
The porch light was on.
That made me smile sadly.
Nathan opened the front door before I could knock.