“But we care about you,” Marin adds.
Viv sighs, a long, dramatic exhale like she’s deflating. “I know. That’s the most annoying part.”
I smile. “So maybe next time take the plunge. Just for a little longer. Let yourself know it’s okay to be you without him.”
Viv gives us a look, half exasperation, half gratitude, and grabs the fizzy concoction in the glass next to her to take a sip. “Fine. But if I drown in my own emotions, it’s on you two. I expect tasteful memorials.”
I raise my hand as though I’m pledging allegiance. “On my honor.”
There’s a beat, then Marin exhales slowly. “I did mine.”
Viv’s eyebrows lift. “The letter?”
Marin nods, holding up a folded piece of notebook paper. “Actually, I did write it to him.”
Viv’s brows lift, and I straighten in my seat.
“I wasn’t going to,” Marin continues, voice trembling slightly. “But once I started, it all poured out. And it got ugly.”
She glances toward the opposite wall, like she’s ashamed to even look at the letter or us. When she speaks, her voice is low but steady. “It wasn’t soft or sad. It was messy. Brutal, even. I told him I hated that he left me with all of it, telling the kids, sorting through a house filled with things we didn’t even like anymore, rewriting a version of our story I hadn’t agreed to.”
Her eyes glisten, but she doesn’t blink them away. “I said he died like he lived, ducking out when things got hard. I called him a coward and then circled it and underlined it a hundred times. I wrote that he abandoned me one last time, and somehow, still gets to be remembered as this great man. This devoted husband. This amazing dad.” She lets out a bitter little laugh. “But no one knew the truth. Not really.”
We’re all quiet, waiting. Marin takes a breath like she’s steadying herself and continues.
“I kept our struggles to myself for years. Because I didn’t want to be the wife who complained. I didn’t want people looking at me like I’d failed. So I smiled, and made everyone’s lunches, and went to the accounting office, and crunched the numbers in perfect little boxes, and told myself we needed to push through a rough patch. Except the patch never ended. It only shifted. We were barely speaking by the end. We were in the process of separating. Divorce, even. But we hadn’t told the kids yet. We hadn’t told anyone.”
She finally looks up at us, eyes filled with a quiet kind of grief. “So when he died, it was like I lost him and didn’t lose him all at once. I was grieving someone who was already half-gone. And now I’m expected to mourn like we were still something sacred. Like I should only feel devastated. But what I feel is so much more complicated than that.”
Her lip trembles. “I asked him, in the letter, if he was planningto leave me first, if he gave up before I did. And I’ll never know the answer.”
Viv doesn’t say anything at first. And neither do I.
Finally, Viv reaches for her glass and whispers, “Jesus.”
I feel my chest tighten.
Marin lets out a shaky breath. “And then I cried. Because part of me meant it, and part of me didn’t. But that's all I’ve been holding. Everyone talks to me like I should only be sad, like I lost the love of my life. But I also lost someone I was furious with. I’m grieving a thousand things at once, and none of them make sense.”
There’s a long pause. Then Viv presses a fingertip to her camera screen, as though she’s trying to absorb some of the hurt from across the internet. “Marin, thank you for saying that out loud.”
I nod, unable to speak right away. My throat tightens. “You don’t have to carry that alone. Or tuck it away because it doesn’t look like how grief is supposed to look.” I do air quotes around “supposed to” and think Harper would be proud.
Marin swipes at her eye and manages a shaky smile. “It felt like I let something out that’s been rotting inside me. And now I’m scared everyone will think I’m awful.”
“You’re not awful.” Viv’s voice is firm. “You’re honest. And that letter is the most real thing any of us has said tonight.”
Frank barks once in the background. “See!” Viv points at the camera. “Even Frank agrees.”
We all laugh, the release necessary after everything Marin shared. Viv seizes the moment and clears her throat dramatically. “Okay, that was emotional and beautiful. But can we all agree that my chakras are not the enemy here?”
I grin, grateful for her comic timing. “We agree.”
Marin’s smile is hesitant. “But maybe next time, try eating dinner alone first? It could be therapeutic. That letter was.”
Viv groans, tossing her head back. “You people are relentless.You know I have an adverse reaction to red meat and emotional vulnerability.”
“Both things you insisted were good for us.” I can’t resist pointing out the irony.
