Chapter 2
“This is me leaving.”
“At midnight?”
“You came home at midnight.”
“That isn’t the same thing.”
“No,” I said. “It isn’t.”
He rubbed both hands over his face.
“You can’t just pack a suitcase in the middle of the night and disappear.”
“I can. I just did.”
Nathan stared at me as if I had broken a rule he hadn’t realized needed saying out loud.
For eleven years, I had been predictable.
Not boring.
Dependable.
There is a difference, though Nathan had apparently stopped recognizing it.
I remembered birthdays.
I paid the water bill because he always forgot.
I bought his father’s favorite coffee before his parents visited.
I kept aspirin in my purse because Nathan got headaches after long meetings.
I knew which nights he needed conversation and which nights he needed silence.
When his company nearly collapsed during his third year there, I stayed awake beside him until two in the morning rewriting presentation slides while he paced our living room.
When my mother died, Nathan held me through the funeral and told me I would never have to carry grief alone.
Somewhere between those two versions of us, he had begun treating my reliability as permanence.
He seemed to believe that because I had always been there, I always would be.
“I told you not to wait up,” he said.
The words landed between us.
I watched realization move slowly across his face.
He heard them too.
His own words.
Spoken casually at 7:12 that evening while he stood near the front door spraying cologne onto his neck.
Don’t wait up.
I had been standing in the kitchen cutting vegetables for dinner.
I had looked at the two salmon fillets on the counter.
Two plates.
Two glasses.
Two people, theoretically.
And something inside me had finally gone quiet.
So I hadn’t waited.
I had eaten alone.
Washed my plate.
Wrapped the second portion and put it in the refrigerator.
Then I walked upstairs.
I opened the suitcase we kept on the top shelf of our closet.
And I packed.
Not dramatically.
Not blindly.
I packed the clothes I actually wore.
Jeans.
Sweaters.
Underwear.
My work shoes.
The green dress my mother had loved.
My medication from the bathroom cabinet.
My passport.
Birth certificate.
Insurance documents.
Laptop.
Chargers.
The folder containing my employment records.
The small velvet box holding my grandmother’s earrings.
Then I walked downstairs and took my mother’s photograph from the bookcase.