He nodded, and for a moment the old Ryan was there, the young man from college who'd helped me repair a busted apartment radiator because neither of us could afford a technician. I felt a rush of grief so sudden that I almost reached out to shake his hand. I didn't. Some relationships end not because every good memory was false, but because the most important promises stopped being kept.
Ryan picked up his box. At the door he paused. “Take care of yourself, Dan.”
“You too.”
After he left, I stood in the empty office until Luis came back from a site visit. He noticed the vacant shelves, said nothing, and handed me a set of drawings for the next day's meeting. We worked until six. When I finally locked the workshop, I realized I had survived another ending without becoming smaller than the person I'd been before it.
The divorce took longer. There were appraisals, disclosures, retirement figures, and disagreements about how to value the growth of Oak & Stone during the marriage. Natalie had helped carry the household financially when the business was young, and I wouldn't deny that. Leah repeatedly reminded me that fairness was not a prize granted to the spouse whose behavior had been better. We eventually reached an agreement that allowed me to retain my business interest and refinance the house, while Natalie received her negotiated share of the marital estate through a combination of assets and payments. Both of us made concessions. Neither left the settlement feeling victorious.
In late March, Natalie came to collect the final boxes she'd left in the guest room closet. We arranged the visit in advance. I moved the boxes to the hallway but left the closet available in case I'd missed anything. She arrived wearing a simple dark coat and flats, without the carefully polished confidence she'd brought home in September. For a moment we stood facing each other at the front door, unsure whether to hug or shake hands or pretend we were strangers completing a transaction.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi.”
She looked toward the hallway. “Thank you for getting everything together.”
“No problem.”
We carried the boxes to her car in two trips. She'd rented a small apartment not far from her office, and she had already begun moving furniture into it. Ben had helped her assemble a bookshelf. Celia had given her an old dining table. I knew these details because our mutual families were not machines capable of keeping every story perfectly separate. Hearing them hurt less now. They sounded like the ordinary logistics of a person beginning a different life.
When we returned inside for the last box, Natalie stopped beside the coffee table. It was the same one that had held the divorce papers on the afternoon she came home. The table had a shallow scratch along one edge from a moving accident years earlier. We'd planned to replace it at least three times, but something else always needed money first. Natalie ran a finger near the scratch and smiled faintly.
“Remember when we tried to get that out with toothpaste?” she asked.
“We made it worse.”
“You said you could fix anything made of wood.”