He opened the rear door of the vehicle, and the dome light came on. For one bright second I saw the back seat clearly. There was a pink booster seat strapped behind the passenger side, its fabric decorated with little flowers, and a child's sippy cup jammed into the cup holder. It was such an unexpected detail that I leaned closer to the glass to make sure I hadn't imagined it. Then the door swung shut, the light disappeared, and James climbed into the driver's seat.
Clare waved once, a small uncertain movement, and the Range Rover pulled away.
We had never had children, and she'd told me nothing about James having any. I stood there after the red taillights vanished, staring at the stretch of driveway where he'd been parked. Maybe the booster seat belonged to a niece or nephew, I told myself. Maybe he'd borrowed the vehicle from somebody. I didn't have the energy to investigate a detail that seemed irrelevant beside the huge fact that my wife had left me for another man.
But I remembered it.
That night I wandered through the house without turning on the television. Her favorite mug was still in the dish rack, and a half-read paperback sat facedown beside her side of the bed. The scent of her shampoo lingered in the bathroom. I opened the bedroom closet and saw empty hangers knocking softly against one another in the draft from the vent. It was the little unfinished things that made her departure hard to believe: the grocery list on the fridge, the reminder to buy her mother's birthday gift, the two concert tickets waiting in an email folder.
I sat on the edge of the bed still wearing my work clothes. At some point I took off one boot and left the other on, because the motion of untying the laces suddenly required more effort than I could manage. My phone remained silent. I was grateful for that and hurt by it at the same time. It would have been easier if she'd texted an apology I could reject or a justification I could argue against. Instead the house felt abandoned, and nothing in it offered a reason.
Eventually I took the keys from my pocket. The white ribbon looked absurd against the dark metal, like decoration left over from a celebration nobody planned to attend. I carried them to the kitchen drawer where we kept batteries, spare screws, and instruction manuals for appliances we'd already learned to use. I laid them at the back, under a packet of picture hooks, and closed the drawer. Some gifts only make sense when the person you bought them for intends to stay long enough to open them.
I lay awake until sunrise listening to sounds I'd never noticed before. A delivery truck reversing on the next street. A neighbor's dog scratching at a door. The heating system clicking on and off.