“It does. Tell me.”
Griffin cleared his throat, made a flicking gesture with his right hand, as though he was trying to preemptively swat away what came next. “He said you were family.”
Layla shrugged, unbothered. That was no big reveal. After all,she’d explained this to Griffin yesterday—what being a MacKenzie had meant to her. What it had felt like, to finally feel part of a family, and why it had felt like a failure to need distance from them after the divorce.
Why it had been so important to her, to be here this week for Emily.
“I may have—I may have had a reaction to that,” Griffin said.
“Youmayhave?”
He lifted his left hand and took off his cap, shoving his right hand through his hair before putting it back on. Lower this time.
“I said that if he was your family, he wouldn’t have left you.”
Layla swallowed. Every bubble in her body went flat.
“And he said?” she asked, but she knew. She knew what she was about to hear.
He did not want to say it. She could tell, he did not want to say it.
So he rushed it out. “He said if you wanted family, you wouldn’t have left him.”
In all the months it had taken for Layla and Jamie to split—to really, committedly call it quits—she had never once felt truly betrayed by him. She felt that he’d changed, and that he’d hurt her in the changing. She had told Cara, over a lunch where she didn’t cry even once, that she and Jamie both had come to think of their vows as more metaphorical than literal. Thattil death do us partonly meant that they had an obligation to stay connected. To be there for each other.
Carahatedthat.
But this—this thing that Jamie said. Itwasa betrayal. A violation, a vow-breaking. He may have kept it vague, but to Layla, it was not vagueenough. It was not honoring the promise thatJamie, after all, had been the one to suggest.
That they keep it true, but unspecific.
We grew apart. We had different priorities. We wanted different things.
She could not help but think that him telling Griffin—the first man Jamie had seen her with since they split—was somehow the worst part of all.
So she sat up straighter in her chair, and for the first time, she said it to someone plainly.
Proudly.
“We got a divorce because I don’t want children.”
* * *
It was easy to tell him.
Shockingly easy, after so long of not really telling anyone, or of always protecting Jamie—protecting what they’d had for so long—in whatever telling.
It hadn’t ever been a secret, before the divorce, that Layla did not want children. Any woman who felt the way she did knew that you didn’t really get away withnottalking about it, whether you wanted to or not. People would casually say things like,When you have one of your ownorYou don’t really know sleep deprivation untilorThe best timing in terms of your career is. People would say,You would be such a good momorOf course you could afford a great day care.
And when they did, you could maybe smile politely and say nothing. Or you could say,Oh, that’s not really in the cards for me, but then sometimes there would be theselooks—pitying looks, looks like you meant that you wanted to and couldn’t, looks that preceded something whispered and well-meaning likeMy niece did IVForHave you ever considered adoption?
So, you would eventually say the truth of it.Actually, I don’twant to have children, you would say, and then a lot of times you would have someone tell you that you would change your mind, or that losing your own mother must’ve been traumatic for you,Have you seen anyone about that?or that you would regret it, eventually, or—everyone’s seeming favorite, a cutting last resort to kick up your existential dread—that you would not have anyone to care for you when you were old.
Layla had long felt that she’d gotten very good at those particular types of conversations.
But since the divorce, this certainty of hers—this thing she had never once doubted about herself, not in all the years since she was capable of really thinking about it—became shrouded by the painful memories she carried with her about the way it all fell apart with Jamie.
And it felt sogoodto finally tell someone.
