the doctor to explain everything twice, as though understanding could rearrange what was happening. We had come home to a house where we'd already picked paint colors for a nursery. She'd cried in the shower because she didn't want me to hear. I had taken every extra job I could find because I believed stability would help. Looking back, I understood that I'd mistaken motion for healing.
For months afterward, we'd moved around each other carefully. If I asked how she was doing, she'd say tired. If she asked, I'd say busy. We were kind, and we were distant, and eventually we built an entire routine around never bringing the most painful subject into the room. I wished we'd sought help. I wished I'd recognized the loneliness in her earlier. I could own those failures without deciding they made her departure acceptable. Understanding how two people lost their way was not the same thing as absolving one person for deliberately hurting the other.
In the evening I carried the wedding photograph down from the hallway. The hook left a pale mark on the paint where the sunlight had never reached. I dusted the frame, wrapped it in an old bedsheet, and placed it in the guest room closet beside the box of photographs. I didn't smash it or turn it facedown. The people in that photograph had deserved their happiness. They simply hadn't known what was coming.
At eight, Ryan texted. Need to talk tomorrow about Westbridge. Important. I said I could review the contract on Monday. He replied almost immediately. Not sure Monday is soon enough. It's personal, too. I stared at the last sentence. Ryan had never described a business negotiation as personal. I considered asking him directly whether he'd been in Cincinnati or Nashville. Instead, I wrote that I would call once I'd finished the documents I was preparing for Leah. I didn't mention what those documents were. He sent back a thumbs-up, followed by another message: Whatever happens with Natalie, don't let it affect the company.
I read that twice. A week earlier I might have heard a caring friend reminding me not to neglect my work. That night I heard something else: concern that my private pain might interfere with an agreement he desperately wanted signed. Neither interpretation was proof of anything. I put the phone aside and went to bed, determined not to let suspicion become a substitute for facts.
Sunday, the tenth night, I spent the morning at Dad's. He wanted help replacing a warped board on his porch steps. We worked slowly because he insisted on holding the measurements and checking my cuts, even though his hand shook slightly when he wrote the numbers down. Around noon he asked whether Natalie had called again. I told him she had, but that I hadn't answered her messages.
“Are you sure that's what you want?” he asked.
“No. I'm not sure about much of anything.”
“That sounds about right.”
I looked at him. “It doesn't bother you that I might be ending the marriage you and Mom watched me start?”
“Your mother would have told you to be careful with your heart,” he said. “Then she'd have asked whether you wanted a sandwich.”