"Hi," she said.
"Hi."
The kitchen island stood twenty feet behind her.
I saw the blue ceramic fruit bowl.
My chest tightened.
Claire noticed where I was looking.
"I haven't moved it," she said.
I nodded.
We spent two hours sorting objects.
Wedding gifts neither of us wanted.
Books we had both read.
A lamp Claire hated and I had defended for no reason except that my father liked it.
Christmas decorations.
The good knives.
Halfway through the hall closet, Claire found the boxes of photographs I had packed before leaving.
She sat on the floor and opened one.
The first photograph on top was from our trip to Asheville six months after the wedding.
We were standing beneath a waterfall, soaked and laughing.
Claire touched the edge of the picture.
"You kept them."
"Of course I kept them."
"I thought you would throw everything away."
"Why?"
She looked at me.
"Because that's what I did."
I did not understand.
She lowered her eyes.
"Not literally. I mean I acted like everything before Adrian was evidence I had settled. Like if I admitted our life was good, then I couldn't justify wanting something different."
I sat on the floor across from her.
"Did you want something different?"
She thought before answering.
"Yes."
It hurt, but less than it would have months earlier.
"What?"
"I wanted to feel important in a way that wasn't attached to helping people."
Her honesty surprised me.
She continued, voice low.
"That sounds awful."
"It sounds human. What you did with it was the problem."
She nodded.
"At Harbor House, every success belonged to the mission. Every donor dinner was about somebody else. Every promotion meant more responsibility, but I still felt like I was facilitating other people's lives. Adrian kept telling me I could build something where I was the reason it succeeded. He made ambition sound like permission."
"You didn't need his permission."
"I know that now."
She looked toward the window.
"I also liked how he looked at me."
There was no point pretending that part did not exist.
"How did he look at you?"