Chapter 8
“That wasn’t my question.”
“We barely saw each other.”
“Because you worked eighty-hour weeks.”
“And you were unhappy.”
“So were you.”
“Exactly.”
I stood from the kitchen table.
“Being unhappy is not the same as being divorced.”
“I know.”
“Did you tell her you were leaving me before Charleston?”
Another pause.
“Yes.”
My stomach turned.
“When?”
“Claire—”
“When?”
“About six weeks ago.”
Six weeks.
I remembered those weeks.
A charity dinner where Julian had held my hand beneath the table.
A Sunday morning when we had eaten breakfast together in bed.
The anniversary card he left beside my coffee.
Twelve years and I’d still choose you.
That had been seventeen days earlier.
I walked upstairs, opened the drawer where I had placed the card after moving to Pine Hollow and read it again.
My throat tightened.
“You wrote that you’d still choose me.”
“I meant it when I wrote it.”
“Seventeen days ago?”
“I was confused.”
“No. You were keeping both doors open.”
“That’s not what happened.”
“Then explain it.”
“I cared about you.”
“Cared?”
“I care about you.”
I laughed once, but there was nothing funny in it.
“Don’t downgrade twelve years of marriage to kindness because it makes your affair easier to explain.”
“I never slept with her while we were together.”
I went still.
There was pride in his voice.
As though that technical boundary should matter.
“Do you love her?”
“Yes.”
“Did you tell her?”
“Yes.”
“Did you hide meetings with her from me?”
“Yes.”
“Then stop asking me to congratulate you for where you drew the line.”
I hung up.
For the next three days, I focused on the audition.
It saved me.
I memorized lines while walking through the vegetable garden.
I recorded myself on my phone.
I hated the first take.
The second was worse.
On the fifth, something happened.
I stopped trying to act.
The character was standing in a kitchen telling her adult son why she had stayed in a broken marriage.
The script said:
Sometimes leaving isn’t the brave thing. Sometimes staying is. The tragedy is that you rarely know which one you’re doing until years later.
I stared at the words.
Then I delivered them.
When the scene ended, I was crying.
Martin called two hours after I sent the recording.
“They want you.”
“What?”
“They want you, Claire.”
“I just auditioned.”
“They’ve wanted you for months. They needed to know you still had it.”