Most nights, Linda and Gerald would be making dinner together. Or watching TV. Sometimes Gerald would be doing a crossword, Linda would be knitting.
Tom should have seen it sooner—this was the marriage he should have been emulating. Not the elegant performance his parents put on for the world, but this. Two people making a life side by side. Shared work, shared joy, shared flaws. A home stitched together with small kindnesses rather than self-importance.
Everywhere in this house, there were half-finished crafts. Swatches, patterns pinned to corkboards. Lauren’s parents’ life was chaos and color and warmth.
He dropped his messenger bag by the door and sat heavily at the kitchen table.
He rubbed his hands over his face.
He thought of the life he’d built and then dismantled, the marriage he’d crushed under his own pride.
He’d wanted to build something that lasted. A house. A marriage.
And he’d used the wrong role models. He’d looked to his parents. Happily married. Financially successful. He hadn’t realized that he wasn’t his father. Lauren wasn’t his mother.
In his desperation to be a good husband, he’d been a terrible one.
He didn’t know how to live with this version of himself—the man who had everything and made it mean nothing.
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, staring at the worn floorboards.
The point wasn’t to build the perfect life for her. It was to build itwith her.
Tom swallowed hard. The thought rose before he could stop it, so simple it hurt:
I just want to go home.
To the house he’d designed for the woman he loved. Toher.
He pressed his palms against his eyes, fighting the burn there.
Tomorrow he’d go to work again. He’d nod when his father said “Nice work.” He’d pretend to care about angles and symmetry.
And tonight, he’d sit at her parents’ table, surrounded by everything he used to think was too much—too bright, too messy—and let himself learn.
It wasn’t tacky. It wasn’t classless.
It was brilliant.
Tom satcross-legged on the bed, the quilt spread across his lap.
He ran his fingers along a seam, following the line like a road map through their life. Their first date. Their old apartment. The hiking trail where he asked her to be his wife.
The church where he’d promised to love her for the rest of his life.
How had he ever thought this quilt was childish? Amateur?
He’d been so wrong.
It was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
Tom’s thumb brushed the square with the church steeple.
Tom should have been paying attention.
He’d spent years trying to polish her edges, tidy the color out of her world.
She’d been perfect the whole time.
