one
NOW
“I WANT A DIVORCE.”
I freeze in the middle of steaming the dress I’m planning to wear tomorrow.
The words shock me.
Not because I didn’t see the end coming—we’ve been racing full speed on a road that ends at a cliff, and I’ve been bracing myself for the fall for years. But now, hearing the four words I’ve been waiting to tumble out of his mouth makes me feel like I’m made of glass, and he just took a bat to my life.
“Did you hear me, Anna?”
I nod slowly, taking in each word with every dip of my chin.
He rubs his knees with his palms as he sits on the edge of our bed, unsure of what to say next. “So...”
His voice trails off into our cold, dimly lit bedroom, and I finish the sentence for him. “I’ll call the lawyer on Monday.”
He nods, avoiding my eyes, as he throws on a hoodie. I tilt my head, studying my husband of ten years, feeling baffled. There’s no yelling. No screaming. No throwing lamps or calling names. No passion. There aren’t even tears. Those have all dried, leaving traces of salt on our skin we can’t wash away no matter how hard we scrub.
He gets up to leave the room. He’ll sleep on the couch again as usual. The kids don’t notice because he’s off to work before I even get them up for school.
My sweet babies. The only good thing to come out of this union.
I was always told that divorce is complicated and messy. I expected it to be loud and emotionally violent as it approached, but for us, it was a quiet cloud rolling over our sky.
When I was little, I squeezed my eyes shut and buried my head under a pillow when I heard my parents argue. I thought fighting meant a winner and a loser—an ending of a solid and sacred unit. Now I know that when the fighting stops, that’s when you should really worry.
“John,” I say.
He stills in the doorway and looks over his shoulder. “Let’s not mention it this weekend, okay? I don’t want my sister to suspect anything, and she needs to focus on the wedding. It’s a happy time for my niece.”
He pauses, chewing his bottom lip, then says, “Of course.”
As he disappears in the dark hallway, I wonder how this could have all been prevented. I wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t asked him to fall in love with me, if we hadn’t fallen in love with an idea that, at the time, seemed perfect. It didn’t seem permanent. And I guess, now, it would seem it still isn’t. Because that’s all love is. An idea. A feeling. A subjective emotion that morphs and changes over the years.
I run my fingers over the silk gown I’m wearing to my niece’s wedding tomorrow. She’s the first grandchild of the McKinley family to marry. She’s young, fresh out of college, and full of dreams. She’s done everything with a burning fire—a thirst that could never be quenched. A zest for life I used to know. Her mother and my oldest sister, Marie, used to joke that Serene isa carbon copy of me. I used to think that, too. But now I know differently.
I know how the world can steal from you. I know what it can take when you aren’t looking. I know what it feels like to watch the burning fire turn to ashes.
I don’t want that for my niece. I’ll walk into the wedding tomorrow with hope for their future and hope that her new husband, Beau, will always remember how to love her, even when the world helps him forget.
And even though it’s over and the love has run dry for me, I hope somewhere, deep down inside my husband’s complacent heart, he remembers what it was like when we loved each other.
two
THEN
“DON’T SEND IT.”
I held my breath as I heard the man’s voice from behind me. It was warm and low, reminding me of how it felt to sit in front of a fire with a glass of red wine. I glanced at him as he moved to the barstool next to me. “I beg your pardon?” I asked.
“If you’re thinking that hard before you send a text, you probably shouldn’t,” he said, sitting down. “Mind if I sit here?”
“You already are.” I nodded at his seated position, and he smiled, amused. My gaze took in his dimples, and then I dragged my eyes up from my glass of white wine to meet the gaze of a man with the bluest eyes I had ever seen.
“Sorry. I was just—” I cut myself off. He didn’t care what I had been thinking about. “Just tired. Long week.”
