He'd learned restraint, all right. He'd learned it so well he'd restrained himself right out of a marriage.
Tom pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes.
The necklace. Jesus Christ, the necklace.
Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Christmas morning like a photograph he couldn’t tear up. Jake fastening the delicatechain around Mia’s throat. The room going soft and warm with sentiment. Everyone looking.
Lauren, watching.
His wife, with hope in her eyes he hadn’t recognized until it was too late.
She shouldn’t have had to tell him what she wanted. Heknewher. Knew she lived for Christmas, for meaning, for objects that held memory and story. Of course a check wasn’t something she would treasure. Of course she wouldn’t hold that moment close to her heart.
He had been offered the perfect chance. Public and intimate. A gift worn against her skin—proof that she was chosen, claimed, adored. He could have stood behind her, fastened the clasp himself.
He groaned.
Why hadn’t he bought her something like that? It wouldn’t have been selfless.
He knew how much he liked seeing his ring on her hand. His ring, marking her as his wife. Something she wore becausehegave it to her. Because he chose her. Giving her jewelry at Christmas could have been for him too. He could have saidminewithout speaking.
Tom pulled his knees up under the quilt, breath sharp. Tried to ignore how his pulse was thudding.
Instead, he’d written her a check.
He didn’t deserve this quilt. Didn’t deserve to touch anything she’d made with her hands. Every stitch was love, and he’dmet that love with indifference, with embarrassment, with cowardice.
He was a small, spineless man who’d valued his parents’ approval over his wife’s heart. He wished he could unzip his own skin and crawl out of it, leave behind the pathetic idiot who’d ruined everything.
He put his head on he knees.
Tom genuinely couldn’t imagine how this could get worse.
Then he heard the front door.
Voices—familiar ones. Linda's bright tone, Gerald's lower rumble. The sound of suitcases being set down, keys dropped in a bowl.
Oh God.
Lauren's parents were home.
Gerald appearedat the top of the stairs, wearing an aggressively floral button-up vacation shirt. Behind him, Linda appeared in the same print—pink hibiscus exploding across the fabric.
Neither looked happy to see him.
“We need to talk," Gerald said, and it wasn't a request.
Tom followed them downstairs into the living room—that explosion of handmade everything that he'd judged so harshly a week ago. Now he knew that the room hadn’t been what was wrong. His outlook had been flawed.
Linda gestured to a chair. Tom sat. He clasped his hands between his knees like a kid about to get scolded by the principal.
They took the sofa across from him—a united front.
"Lauren told us what happened," Linda said. Her voice was steel.
"I know," Tom said. "I know what I did. I was—" The words tasted sour. He felt sick saying them, sick knowing they were true. "I was a fucking idiot and I broke her heart and I don't know how to fix it."
Silence.
