She pressed her palms together. "Can we talk about us first? About the boxes?"
"The letter is about us. It's about whether you believe I get to know the facts of my own life."
"You make me sound like a monster."
"I haven't called you anything."
"You look at me as if you don't recognize me."
There was no response I could offer that would have made either of us feel better. I recognized her too well. I recognized how quickly a conversation could be pulled away from her action and toward the hurt on her face. I recognized how my concern for her feelings could become the reason the original injury stayed unresolved.
"Tell me about Henry," I said.
She blinked, startled by the change of subject. "What about him?"
"You stayed at his house. What happened?"
"Nothing."
"That's not an answer."
"We talked. I slept on the couch. He's seeing someone; you know that."
I hadn't known Henry was seeing anyone seriously. Rachel looked frustrated when I said so, as if I had failed to maintain a complete file on the person she'd used to frighten me.
"I went there because I needed someone who would listen without turning everything into a contract," she said.
"Then why did you text me his name? You didn't need my permission to be somewhere safe. You could've told me you were taking a night to cool down."
"I wanted you to care."
"I did care. I cared so much I barely slept."
"You didn't call."
"Because I wasn't going to compete with your ex to prove it."
Rachel leaned forward. "Do you have any idea what it felt like leaving this apartment and having you let me go?"
"Probably awful," I said. "And I still wasn't responsible for making a frightening situation more frightening to demonstrate love."
"You just let people walk away. Your father, your sister, now me."
The room went quiet. Even Rachel seemed to hear what she'd said after the words were already out. I looked down at Leah's letter, at the line telling me I deserved the right to make my own decision.
"You don't get to use my family against me," I said.
"I didn't mean it like that."
"Then stop talking as if every boundary I set is abandonment."
She began to cry, genuinely this time, with the exhausted, uneven breaths of someone whose defense had run out. It would have been easy to fold. I'd done it before. Instead I handed her a box of tissues and sat in the chair opposite the sofa.
For a long while neither of us spoke. The engagement ring was on her finger, a small square-cut diamond catching the lamplight each time she moved her hands. She had worn it to Henry's house. That fact hurt in a way I couldn't properly explain, but I didn't ask her to take it off. I didn't have the energy to make the ring another contest.
Eventually she said, "So you're really doing this? You're ending four years over one night?"
"Not one night," I replied. "The night made me look honestly at what we've been doing. The letter tells me how far you've taken it."