The divorce progressed through the required steps, with the settlement providing much of the framework. There were still forms to sign and details to resolve, and I learned not to expect legal closure to arrive at the same pace as emotional closure. Clare and I communicated mostly through our attorneys or brief messages about belongings. When her sister suggested she might want to talk, I said I wasn't ready. I didn't want a conversation conducted merely to reduce somebody else's discomfort. If we ever spoke again, I wanted it to be because the truth had become clearer, not because silence felt awkward.
About two months after the lobby, on a Tuesday evening, someone knocked on my front door while rain tapped against the windows. I was making dinner and listening to a baseball game on the radio. I wiped my hands on a towel, walked to the hall, and looked through the glass. Clare stood on the porch in a plain hoodie, no makeup, her hair pulled back the way she used to wear it on lazy Sundays. She looked smaller than I remembered.
I stood with my hand on the lock for several seconds. There had been a time when I could identify her footsteps outside the door and feel my entire body relax. Now I was wondering whether opening it would invite back more pain than either of us could carry. But I had spent months demanding honesty from myself as well as others, and I knew there were questions I'd eventually need to answer. I opened the door and let the cool wet air settle between us.
"Hi," she said.
I hadn't heard her voice in person since the lobby. It sounded more tired than I remembered, stripped of the bright certainty that had carried her out of our marriage. There were drops of rain caught in her hair and a faint red mark on one cheek where she'd apparently been rubbing her face. She kept both hands inside the sleeves of her hoodie as though she didn't know what else to do with them.
"Hi," I answered.
"Could I come in? Just for a minute?"
I stepped back enough to let her out of the rain but did not invite her farther than the entryway. I couldn't have explained the boundary in legal or psychological terms at the time. I only knew that the living room still held the outline of too many old evenings, and I did not want her sitting in her familiar place on the couch as though a difficult season had finally ended. She noticed I hadn't moved aside completely, and I saw her understand that this visit wasn't going to be a return to the household she'd left.
"I know I have no right to show up like this," she said. "I called my sister first. She told me you might not answer, and I said I understood. Then I drove over anyway because I couldn't keep putting it off."