As I walked her to the door, she touched my sleeve. "I keep wanting to ask whether you hate me."
"I don't," I said. "Some days I'm very angry. Some days I miss you so much it feels physical. Those things don't add up to hate."
"I wish I'd known that before I ruined it."
I opened the door. She stepped onto the porch, turned, and looked at me as though she wanted to memorize the room behind my shoulder. Then she went down the steps without asking me to stop her. I closed the door and stood in the hallway until I heard her car leave, feeling neither victorious nor destroyed, just very tired.
I told Nora about the decision a week later. She listened, said she was sorry, and asked whether I wanted to talk about it. I told her I'd spent enough months explaining a marriage to people and that what I wanted most was to walk through a city without turning every corner into a question. She suggested a Saturday morning walk by the river, no agenda, no debate, just a place to put one foot in front of the other.
We met near the Schuylkill River Trail on a clear morning that smelled of damp leaves and warm pavement. Runners passed us, cyclists called warnings, and the water moved beneath the bridges with complete indifference to our histories. We talked about her exhibit and my upcoming project restoring a school auditorium. After an hour she asked whether I still felt guilty for leaving Sabrina.
"Sometimes," I said. "The mind can understand a decision long before the rest of you catches up."
"I know that feeling."
She told me she was moving toward divorce as well, although the parenting arrangements made everything slower. Oliver had started seeing a counselor he liked, and Colin was finally beginning to follow the agreed schedule without turning every visit into a referendum on the marriage. Nora wanted her son to have a father who showed up consistently, even if she could no longer be Colin's wife.
"I keep thinking the worst part is that none of us gets the old future back," she said as we stopped by the railing. "Even Oliver. He gets a different version of his family, whether he asked for it or not."
"Maybe getting a different future doesn't mean nobody gets a good one."
She looked out across the river. "I'm not ready to believe that every day."
"Neither am I."
We stood there a while, then walked back toward the city. At a crossing near the trail entrance, traffic moved past us and Nora reached for my sleeve to stop me from stepping off the curb too soon. Her hand remained there for half a second longer than necessary. When she let go, neither of us mentioned it, but the warmth of that small touch stayed with me all afternoon.