She set her purse on the counter. For a moment she seemed ready to cry, but instead she became angry. She said she hadn't truly meant divorce and that husbands and wives sometimes said things they didn't mean during arguments. I agreed that people could speak carelessly when upset. What I could not agree was that the words had appeared from nowhere.
"You've used the possibility of leaving whenever I tried to tell you I was hurt," I said. "Maybe not with that exact sentence, but the meaning has been there. If I disagree, I become controlling. If I ask where we stand, I'm insecure."
"If I talk about money, I'm cheap. Tonight you told me to leave the marriage if I didn't like the way things were. I believe you."
"So now you're punishing me for one stupid sentence?"
"No. I'm finally making a decision about the months that came before it."
She pulled out a chair but didn't sit. Her gaze moved from the table to the stove and back to me, taking in the ordinary evidence of the evening she'd almost missed. "I turned around before I even got downtown," she said quietly. "I couldn't stop thinking about what you said."
"What were you thinking?"
She opened her mouth, then pressed her lips together. Finally she said, "That you weren't going to come after me."
It was one of the most honest things she'd said to me in months, and the honesty hurt. I wanted her to have turned around because she suddenly understood how lonely I'd been. I wanted her to tell me she had been careless and wanted to fix it. Instead, she had realized that the pattern she'd relied on was no longer guaranteed.
"I wasn't going to chase you," I said. "You were free to go out. You still are. But I don't have to pretend that everything between us is fine."
Natalie sat at last. She stared at the bracelet around her wrist and twisted it once. "Is there someone else?" she asked.
I blinked. "What?"
"Are you seeing someone? Is that why you're suddenly so calm?"
The question was so strange that I almost laughed, but there was nothing funny about it. I told her there wasn't anyone else, that I hadn't been texting another woman or building a secret life behind her back. I'd been going to work, coming home, repairing our house, and trying to figure out how to speak to my own wife without making her angry.
"Then why would you want to divorce me?" she asked.
"Because I can't carry both sides of this marriage anymore."
She covered her face with her hands. For a few seconds I thought she was crying, but when she lowered them, her eyes were dry. She said she felt trapped, that work was demanding, and that she had spent so many years being responsible that she needed to feel spontaneous again. I listened because I believed those feelings could be real. I also believed they didn't explain why she had begun treating me with contempt.