Jamie had dropped his hand from his nose, finally, but still, Layla did not really look at the damage. She said, “I’m going to go,” and then she turned, knowing already Griffin had beat her to it—that he was already out the door, alone in the Paris morning, but also alone somewhere else entirely, in the middle of a fiery spring night.
She barely looked at anyone as she strode back through the room, grabbing her purse up again and passing Rosie and Sam in the hallway. “Carry alcohol wipes,” she said to Sam, because she could not help it—could not help feeling for this woman and the Paris crucible she’d been put through this week. “Waft one under your nose when you feel sick.”
Sam may have murmured her thanks, but Layla was out the door, stepping into the street with a sinking feeling in her stomach at not being able to see Griffin straightaway.
She would find him; she would try to the right at first, and—
“Lay, wait!”
She groaned. Actuallygroaned: a not-calm, extremely botheredArrrghat being held up, in this moment, byhim.
The husband who had—she could see it so clearly now—held her up for solong.
For a second, she thought of simply speeding up—of ignoring him, of running away, of refusing to give him even a second more of her time this morning.
But just as quickly, she rethought it.
She thought,This isn’t just about a second more of this morning.
This is about a second more of forever.
So, she stopped where she stood. Turned to face him: Jamie and his soft, light eyes that had welled with tears on their wedding day;Jamie and his safe, sweet handsomeness, even with a swollen, already bruised bridge of his nose; Jamie’s quick-to-smile mouth turned down in a pouting frown of sadness and disappointment and concern.
She had so truly loved him, once.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice cracking. “I’m sorry you found out that way about the baby. I didn’t mean for you—”
“Jamie,” she interrupted, andyes—yes, there it was, the blade in her voice, the one she’d learned over the last few days how to sharpen—“I do not care about the baby.”
He stared. Like Robert, like Manon. Stared like he didn’t know her at all.
And maybe he didn’t.
Not anymore.
“I hope the very best for you, and for Samantha, and for your baby. But it is none of my business anymore. It has not been my business for a long time, and I should’ve said that to you sooner.”
“Lay,” he said again, and she decided that she didn’t like that nickname. Did not like the diminutive, the way it chopped her almost in half, the way itflattenedher. “Of course it’s your business. We said we would always be—”
“Family,” she finished for him, but in this bladelike version of her voice it was a new word. A severing, rather than a joining.
“Yeah,” he said. He sounded so small and lost and sad that a part of her—the part of her that had been in love with him once, that had planned a life with him once—ached for him, and despite everything, she was glad not to have lost that aching. She was glad that this severing was leaving something behind in her. Something that would hurt a little forever.
Sometimes, that was all you could keep from the things that happened to you.
“I lied,” she said, still sharp, because it was a kindness to keep it that way for him, too. “Or I changed my mind, maybe. It doesn’t really matter which. What matters is that I should’ve known that when we got divorced, we couldn’t be a family anymore. Maybe someone else could do it, Jamie, but I can’t, and you know why I can’t. You know what it meant to me to call you—to call your mom, your dad, your sister—family. And that’s why you should’ve known that it wouldn’t work to change your mind about us. To change your mind, and still get to keep me.”
He made a noise—a scoff, maybe, but there was a weak, nasally whistle that accompanied it, the swelling doing its work.
“If this is abouthim—” he began, and Layla held up a hand, stopping him.
“This is about you, Jamie,” she said. “This is about your loss, and why it’s not my job to make it easier for you. Nicer, more amicable, whatever. We aredivorced.”
He winced at the word, one she realized they had only ever said rarely to each other. Euphemisms, that’s what they’d preferred:I think it’s timeorgoing our separate waysor even the somewhat-harshsplitting up.
But to her, it felt so good to say it: straight to his face, while they stood across from each other, a reverse ritual that maybe would have helped her on that day when she’d just scrawled her signature across a tab-tipped set of documents.
The restlessness was back in her now—the need to go, to find the man she’d actually come out here for. She looked at her ex-husband and heard his whistling nose and thought of all the ways theMacKenzies left in that apartment would talk about her today, once the dust settled.
