He lowered his paper and tilted his head in that quizzical manner of his that said he had not quite heard her. “I’m sorry, what”?
She repeated her words, he put down his paper. They talked for an hour and a half, the most they had spoken in more than a year. It seemed to her that there was no conviction in his words of protest. It actually seemed as if he might be relieved, as if she had opened a door for him that he thought had been forever closed. Neither was angry. Both were sad. They hugged. He cried. For some reason she did not, though she felt that she might at any moment.
The next day, she pulled her boxes from the closet for the last time. As if by unspoken agreement, he had found errands he needed to run and was not there to watch her departure. Her girlfriend would arrive in less than an hour to help her carry her things to her car. To the boxes she added the things from their home that she wanted to keep, surprised at how few things she added. She gathered pencil and paper to write a note, then realized there was nothing to say. She thought about writing just the word “goodbye” but then realized that it might be taken in its harshest sense though intended in its best. She put the paper and pencil away, note unwritten. She carried the lightest boxes to her car, struggled with the remaining two, but realized she needed help and would have to wait. She sat down. She looked around what had been her home. She found that now she could cry.