She let go of the handle.
“I’m sorry.”
Matthew did not answer.
“I know that doesn’t mean much.”
“No.”
“But I am.”
“I believe you feel sorry.”
The distinction was painful.
Claire wiped her face.
“What time tomorrow?”
“Ten.”
“Where?”
“The coffee shop on High Street. The one near the library.”
She knew it.
“Okay.”
Matthew nodded.
Claire picked up the suitcase.
Then stopped.
“Matthew?”
He waited.
“Are you with someone?”
The question had been waiting behind everything else.
His expression became unreadable.
“Is that what matters right now?”
“No.”
“Yes, it is.”
Claire felt exposed.
“I just need to know.”
“No.”
Relief came too quickly.
Matthew saw it.
Claire hated that he saw it.
He added:
“I’m not with anyone.”
She looked down.
“Okay.”
“But don’t mistake that for an opening.”
The relief disappeared.
Matthew closed the door.
Claire stood on the porch for several seconds after the latch clicked.
Then she walked back toward the rental car.
Eighteen months earlier, she had left that same driveway before sunrise.
Matthew had been upstairs sleeping with Caleb in a bassinet beside the bed.
Sophie had been curled beneath a purple blanket in the room across the hall.
Claire had stood in the kitchen at 4:40 in the morning with a suitcase by her feet and a handwritten note on the counter.
She had believed she was about to save herself.
At the time, she did not think of it as abandoning anyone.
That word came later.
For the first months after Caleb’s birth, Claire had felt as if every room in the house were becoming smaller.
Before children, she had worked in event management for a hotel group downtown. She liked the movement of it. New people. New schedules. Last-minute problems. Clients who wanted impossible things and paid other people to make them possible.
Then Sophie was born.
Claire reduced her hours.
The decision had seemed reasonable.
Matthew’s job as a project estimator for a commercial construction company carried the stronger insurance plan. He earned more. Childcare for an infant was expensive.
Claire told people she wanted more time with Sophie.
That was partly true.
She loved her daughter.
She also missed being someone who could leave work at ten at night and stop for tacos with coworkers without calculating who had the diaper bag.
She missed buying a plane ticket without studying nap schedules.
She missed being needed for reasons that did not involve food, bath time, clean clothes or comfort.
She felt ashamed of missing those things.
So she rarely said them.
By the time Sophie turned three, Claire had returned to work almost full-time.
She felt more balanced.
Then she became pregnant again.
The second pregnancy had not been accidental, exactly.
But it had happened sooner than Claire expected.
Matthew had been thrilled.
Claire smiled when she told him.
She loved the baby almost immediately.
She was also afraid.
Not of childbirth.
Of disappearing again inside the role of mother.
She never explained that fear clearly.
When she tried, Matthew often responded with practical solutions.
“We can budget for daycare.”
“I can do mornings.”
“My mom can help on Thursdays.”
To Matthew, problems were things two people solved.
To Claire, some problems did not feel solvable because she could not explain what was wrong without sounding ungrateful.
She had a loving husband.
A healthy daughter.
A home.
A baby coming.
A job she could return to.
Why was she unhappy?
She began hiding the question.
After Caleb was born, life became a series of interrupted nights.
He was a difficult sleeper.
Sophie became clingier.
Claire’s maternity leave stretched through winter.
Some days she did not shower until four in the afternoon.
Matthew helped.
That was another fact she later had to admit.
He changed diapers.
Took night feedings when bottles allowed.
Cooked badly.
Cleaned imperfectly.