There are things we need to settle. The house. The accounts. The insurance. My care. The debt you hid from me. The promises you broke.
I will speak to you when I am ready, with someone else present.
Until then, I need you to do something you have avoided for a long time.
Sit in the silence you created.
Lauren
I reached the end and kept staring at her name.
Lauren.
Not “your wife.” Not “love.” Not even the small L she used to sign when she was being tender. Just her name, complete and separate from mine.
The silence she mentioned seemed to swell around me immediately. It filled the living room, pressed against my ears, exposed every corner of me I had tried not to see.
Daniel picked up a manila folder from the kitchen table and placed it on the coffee table in front of me.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Copies,” he said. “Everything Lauren wanted you to have tonight.”
I looked at the folder but did not touch it.
“I need to see her.”
“No.”
The answer came so quickly it stunned me.
“Daniel, please.”
“No.”
“I need to apologize.”
Daniel’s face twisted, not with rage, but with something almost like grief. “You think an apology is a key? You think you say the right words and doors open?”
“I’m not saying that.”
“That’s exactly what you’re saying.”
I stood, too quickly, and the room swayed. “She’s my wife.”
“For now,” he said.
The phrase struck with surgical precision.
For now.
I looked at the wedding ring on my finger. It had felt invisible for days. Now it felt heavy enough to bruise.
“I made a mistake,” I said.
Daniel’s eyes flashed. “A mistake is forgetting an appointment. A mistake is taking the wrong exit. You made a series of choices, every day, for months. Then you left her here and hoped the house would hold her until you were done pretending.”
