I paid the outstanding balance we had properly incurred, and that night I sat at the desk in our spare bedroom until almost two in the morning. I wrote down the conversation, including the words I had used, because I did not trust myself to recall them impartially once I was angry. Peter had suggested keeping notes, but I discovered that notes served another purpose: they stopped me from rewriting the past to make my present more comfortable. As I finished, I found an old photograph tucked into the corner of the desk drawer. Erica and I were on our first fishing trip together, both of us laughing because she had caught a fish and refused to touch it.
I held the photograph for several minutes. It would have been easier to believe she had always been selfish, always been calculating, always been the person who stood in our kitchen discussing an exit strategy over expensive sparkling water. That would have spared me the harder question of how much had changed and how much I had failed to notice because the business gave me somewhere useful to hide. We had been happy once. I still believe that, and no amount of what came later has made the happiness dishonest.
The night Erica left, I had brought home two rib-eye steaks from a butcher I trusted and marinated them with more optimism than the occasion deserved. I had planned to ask whether we could spend a weekend away, perhaps somewhere without excellent restaurants or anyone who knew Damon's name. It was an awkward attempt at reopening a conversation she had spent months closing, but I had not stopped hoping altogether. When she came outside in white linen pants and a tan sweater, I thought for a second she might be coming to help with the plates. Then I saw the suitcase standing just inside the sliding door.
"I'm moving out tonight," she told me. She said it clearly, almost gently, as though speaking to a hotel guest whose reservation had been changed. I turned the grill down and asked where she intended to stay. "Damon has a guest room," she said, watching my face. Her expression suggested she expected the name to detonate something inside me.
"The fitness guy has a guest room," I repeated. Erica's jaw tightened. "Don't make it ugly, Mark. I need space. I need to find out who I am without having everything judged." I asked whether she was telling me our marriage was over.
She did not answer that directly; instead she said, "Don't call me again. I mean it. I'm leaving tonight."
I looked past her at the Tahoe keys in her hand. The vehicle was titled to Harborline, insured through the business, and authorized for a particular combination of business travel and compensation-related personal use. It was not an ordinary personal car bought for Erica alone, a distinction she had never shown much interest in discussing. I wanted to ask how she planned to become financially independent while driving away in the company's SUV. Instead I put the question aside because it could be settled through proper channels and this moment was already painful enough.