—
WHENBRIAN COMEShome from work, I am packing, and I have purchased a ticket to Heathrow. He sees me folding a change of clothes and underwear into a knapsack and goes still in the doorway. I realize he thinks I am leaving him.
Again.
“I’m going to London,” I explain. “For Win.”
He sits on the edge of the bed. “Did she die, then?”
“No. But I don’t think it will be long now. She asked me to deliver her letter now, instead of waiting.”
Brian nods, pulling at a thread in our comforter.
“I know you don’t want me to go,” I reply. “But I made a promise.”
“A promise,” Brian repeats. “You made one to me, too, a long time ago.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Brian looks at me. “I found you looking at your old boyfriend online, but I didn’t run. You keep saying that I’m the problem, that it’s because of what I did or almost did, but I’m here. I’m sticking. I’m fighting for our marriage. You’re the one who keeps putting distance between us.” His voice breaks. “Jesus. Being with you is all I ever wanted. And being with me, for you, is torture.”
“That’s not true. I love you.” I hesitate. “I can see us, twenty years from now, with wrinkles and white hair and grandchildren, all of it. I just don’t know how we get from here…to there.”
He holds my palm between his hands, turning it over like he could divine my future. “I do. I’ll do whatever it takes to make you feel safe again. I’ll quit my job and move to a different university. I’ll go to counseling. We could take a vacation. Egypt—you could show me Egypt! Let’s go to Meret’s tennis matches together and be the loudest, most embarrassing parents. Let’s try to remember how to beusagain.”
I want to. I want to so badly that I ache. But I can’t figure out how to beusif I don’t know whoIam.
“It’s like déjà vu. The thing I’m most afraid of happening keeps actually happening,” Brian says. “Every time you walk out that door, I think it’s the time you’re not coming back.”
I don’t know what to say. The last time I ran away, I didn’t think I was coming back, either.
Brian draws a shallow breath. “Do you think I don’t know that you settled?”
“I didn’t settle,” I tell him. “I wound up exactly where I was supposed to wind up.”
“Then don’t go.”
Logic. Brian has always been able to wield it. He makes it seem so simple: stay here, and fight for the marriage. But I have to deliver Win’s letter.
“I’m not saying you shouldn’t deliver it,” Brian adds, reading my thoughts. “I’m saying you shouldn’t deliver itright now.”
“Sometimes the past matters more than the present,” I answer, and he lets go of my hand.
We are saved from ourselves by Meret, who bounces into the bedroom, brandishing an envelope. “It’s back. It’s finally back!”
Brian and I both instantly morph into normal, untroubled parents. “Genomia?” Brian guesses.
“What’s Genomia?”
Meret sits down between us. “The DNA test Dad got me for my birthday.”
I vaguely remember her thanking Brian for the belated gift—but I hadn’t actually ever asked what the present was.
“It’s supposed to tell you if you have tendencies for, like, celiac disease or high cholesterol or Alzheimer’s…or obesity,” Meret says. “I just thought it would be cool to see why I’m the way I am.”
A girl who looks nothing like her parents, who is trying to find her place in the world. I meet Brian’s gaze over her head.
“Well?” he says. “Time for the big reveal?”
