By Monday, Celeste had begun complaining that I was ruining the atmosphere before her vacation. She said I was acting like a landlord instead of a husband. I had stopped asking questions about the booking because the answers had become variations on the same refusal, and she interpreted my silence as a sulk. I continued paying our regular bills from the joint checking account and tracking the expenses so neither of us would later be surprised by what had cleared. My spreadsheets were not a substitute for a conversation, but they were at least honest about the numbers.
That afternoon she asked why I hadn't mentioned the house fund again. I told her we'd need to account for the withdrawals and that I was speaking with someone about our finances. She looked uneasy for a fraction of a second, then laughed and said I had probably found a budget app that was going to scold her for buying sunscreen. I didn't tell her I'd retained a divorce lawyer. I knew withholding that news until she returned would hurt, but I wasn't ready to turn the days before her flight into a series of arguments about a decision I had already made.
On Tuesday evening, the date the trip had originally been announced, we ended up eating dinner at the same table while a rainstorm moved through the neighborhood. Celeste ordered takeout because she said the kitchen was too messy to cook, though the mess was mostly packages from her shopping. I asked whether she was happy with how things were between us. She said she would be happier if I stopped making everything into a big emotional conversation. Then she asked whether I'd picked up detergent for the clothes she was packing.
It was a small exchange, not the kind anyone would retell at a party. But I remembered it later because it answered a question I'd been asking for a year. When I asked about us, Celeste heard an interruption in the schedule of things she wanted to do. I couldn't force her to take a different view, and I had begun to understand that explaining myself more carefully would not necessarily change what she wanted to hear. I washed the takeout containers, put away the remaining food, and took Biscuit outside under the porch awning until the rain eased.
Wednesday night she spread two suitcases on the bed and chose the smaller one. Her phone kept chiming with messages, and she smiled at it each time as she folded clothes into tight squares. I asked whether Briana was picking her up for the airport in the morning. She paused, not long enough to be suspicious by itself, and said they were meeting there because it was easier. She didn't ask whether I'd be home when she returned. I wondered later if she had assumed she could take that for granted, or whether she had simply stopped imagining a different possibility.
I set an alarm for four because I had a service call scheduled near a restaurant's morning delivery window. Celeste woke before it, turned on every light in the bedroom, and moved around with the brisk efficiency of somebody preparing for a much-anticipated holiday. Biscuit followed her from the closet to the bathroom, tail moving uncertainly as he tried to understand why everyone was awake. I dressed in the dark corner of the room and tried to look at my wife without searching her face for proof of something I didn't yet know. There was still a part of me that hoped she'd stop beside the door and say she'd been unfair.