"You're actually helping me leave?"
"I'm giving you your suitcase. The rest is yours to decide."
She began folding clothes. I gathered the toiletries from the bathroom and placed them in a bag, more out of habit than tenderness. My hands knew how to help her prepare for a trip; I'd done it dozens of times. Only this time the destination was a man she'd met while I waited at home. When she asked whether I'd be okay, I said I would manage, because I couldn't bear to let her use my pain as one more reason to call herself brave.
We didn't sleep much. I heard her moving around until after midnight, opening drawers and zipping pockets. Once she came into the living room and stood beside the couch for a moment. I thought she might finally say she was sorry in a way that didn't immediately return to her needs. Instead she asked whether I'd mind if she took the small travel adapter I'd bought for our future trips. I said she could take it.
In the morning I drove her to the airport. I know some people will think that was foolish, but I didn't have the energy to turn our last hours into a performance of anger. She sat beside me holding the same camera I'd given her for her birthday. Traffic was light, and the silence was so complete that I could hear a loose vent rattling on the passenger side. I fixed that vent the following week because I couldn't stand the memory of that sound.
At the curb, she unfastened her seat belt and paused. "Maybe someday you'll understand," she said.
"I understand you've made your choice."
"I didn't want to hurt you."
"Then I wish you'd made different choices before this morning."
She waited another second, as if I might change my mind and ask her to stay. I got out, opened the trunk, and placed her suitcase on the pavement. She hugged me briefly, more carefully than she had on the way home from the first Vegas trip. I didn't hug her back as tightly. She walked toward the terminal, and I watched the doors close for the second time in a month.
This time, I knew she was not coming back to the life we'd shared. What I didn't know was how much of that life I would have to take apart before I could begin making one that belonged to me. I drove home by a different route because I couldn't bear the idea of taking the same road we'd traveled together so many times. The town looked offensively normal.
School buses were pulling up to intersections, a man was watering flowers outside a hardware store, and a woman in a grocery parking lot was trying to coax a toddler into a car seat. Nobody knew the life I'd been imagining for four years had ended before lunch. I wasn't angry at them for it, but I remember being startled that the world could continue without acknowledging what had happened.