I also knew I was not required to be perfectly graceful in the middle of discovering my wife had spent months living a second life.
“I’m sorry for that sentence,” I said.
She seemed startled.
I continued.
“I’m not sorry about the divorce.”
Lauren stared.
“You can’t make a decision this big in one week.”
“I made it the night you left.”
“No, you were angry.”
“I was clear.”
“You loved me.”
“I did.”
“Did?”
The word broke slightly.
I looked at her.
“I still love parts of you.”
That was the hardest truth I said that day.
Lauren sat down again.
Her shoulders collapsed.
“Then why are you doing this?”
“Because love is not the same thing as permission.”
She covered her face with both hands.
For a while, neither of us spoke.
Then she whispered:
“I thought you would fight for me.”
I leaned against the doorway.
“I did.”
She looked up.
“For months.”
“The trips.”
“Therapy.”
“The house.”
“Every conversation where you told me stability was suffocating and I tried to invent a version of marriage exciting enough to keep you interested.”
My voice remained quiet.
“I was fighting.”
“You just didn’t respect the fight because it didn’t look dramatic.”
Lauren cried harder then.
I did not comfort her.
That felt unnatural.
For years, her tears activated something automatic in me.
Move closer.
Touch her shoulder.
Fix.
That instinct remained.
I simply did not obey it.
After several minutes, she asked:
“Where am I supposed to go?”
I looked toward the boxes.
“Where have you been for seven days?”
Her eyes hardened again.
“Blake’s.”
“Then I assume that remains an option.”
“It doesn’t.”
That caught me.
“What happened?”
“Nothing.”
“Lauren.”
She gave a bitter laugh.
“You’re divorcing me. You don’t get to interrogate me about my boyfriend.”
The word boyfriend hit the room.
She heard it too.
For the first time, neither of us could pretend this was an experiment.
“I’m not interrogating you,” I said.
“You said you needed somewhere to go.”
She looked toward the floor.
“His wife came back.”
I blinked.
“I thought they were separated.”
“They are.”
“Apparently not geographically.”
“It’s complicated.”
Of course it was.
Blake’s entire philosophy seemed built around complications other people were required to tolerate.
Lauren explained in fragments.
His wife, Melanie, had been staying with her sister.
She returned unexpectedly Saturday morning.
Blake had not told Lauren that Melanie still had keys.
There had been an argument.
Lauren had gone to a hotel for two nights.
Blake stopped answering consistently after that.
By Monday morning, he told her they needed “less pressure.”
I almost admired the symmetry.
Lauren had left our house asking me not to label anything.
Blake had responded to her presence by doing the same.
“Did he return the fifteen thousand?” I asked.
She glared at me.
“No.”
“Then speak to a lawyer.”
Her expression shifted.
“You really are done.”
“Yes.”
Not angry.
Not triumphant.
Done.
Rebecca handled the next several weeks.
Lauren retained her own attorney, a woman named Denise Harper.