Chương 3
I had not realized his fear also came with a habit.
When things became scary, he hid.
I closed the laptop.
“What did you tell Sarah exactly?”
He looked away.
“Jason.”
“I said we were reevaluating.”
“That’s all?”
A pause.
Too long.
“What?”
He sighed.
“I told her we might not be ready.”
My stomach tightened.
“Might not?”
He looked at me.
“What?”
“You told her we might not be ready.”
“Yes.”
“But we never decided that.”
“I thought we were getting ahead of ourselves.”
The anger returned.
Not the explosive kind.
The exhausted kind.
“You know what is funny?”
He waited.
“I spent months worrying I was failing because I was not doing enough.”
His expression changed.
“I never asked you to feel that way.”
“No.”
I nodded.
“You just let me.”
The kitchen became silent.
Linda walked in carrying a basket of laundry.
She stopped when she saw us.
Nobody spoke.
She looked between us.
“I can come back.”
“No,” I said.
I did not know why I said it.
Maybe because I was tired of conversations changing whenever another person entered the room.
Maybe because Linda was part of the reason we were here.
Not the only reason.
But part of it.
She placed the basket down.
“I don’t want to be in the middle.”
I almost smiled.
That sentence would have been easier to believe if she had not been standing beside Jason when decisions about my life were being made.
“You were already in the middle.”
Her face hardened.
“I was trying to help my son.”
“I know.”
“And you.”
I looked at her.
“I know that too.”
That seemed to surprise her.
I was not interested in pretending she had no good intentions.
The problem was that good intentions could still leave bruises.
Linda sat down slowly.
“When you moved in, I thought I was helping.”
“You were.”
She nodded.
“Then I don’t understand.”
I looked at the laundry basket.
At the tiny blue shirt on top.
Tyler’s favorite shirt.
The one with the dinosaur wearing sunglasses.
“I think everyone got comfortable with me carrying the uncomfortable parts.”
Neither of them answered.
“I worked extra because we needed money.”
Jason looked down.
“I cleaned because Linda cooked.”
Linda opened her mouth.
Then stopped.
“I adjusted because this was supposed to be temporary.”
The room felt different after I said it.
Like something had finally been placed where everyone could see it.
Jason sat across from me.
“What do you want?”
The question scared me.
Because I had spent months wanting one thing.
A house.
Now I was not sure that was the biggest thing anymore.
“I want honesty.”
He nodded.
“Okay.”
“No.”
I shook my head.
“Not just now.”
I looked at him.
“I want to know what else you have decided without me.”
His face changed.
A small reaction.
But there was one.
“What does that mean?”
“It means I don’t know what I don’t know.”
He looked away.
And that was when I knew there was something else.
Not another affair.
Not some dramatic secret.
Something smaller.
Something more realistic.
Something that had been sitting quietly in the corner.
“What?”
He swallowed.
“I talked to my boss.”
“About what?”
“The house.”
I waited.
He stared at the table.
“I asked about a promotion.”
“That’s good.”
“It wasn’t just a promotion.”
The way he said it made my chest tighten.
“What does that mean?”
“I was considering transferring.”
“To where?”
“Indiana.”
I stared at him.
Indiana was three hours away.
Not another country.
Not impossible.
Still a different life.
“Why?”
“More money.”
“When?”
“Last summer.”
Before we moved in.
Before the overtime.
Before I started believing our plan was set.
“You were considering moving our family three hours away?”
“I didn’t decide.”
“Again.”
He looked up.
“What?”
“You keep saying that.”
I stood.
“You didn’t decide.”
My voice shook.
“But you considered it.”
He nodded slowly.
“I was scared.”
I laughed once.
Not because anything was funny.
Because I did not know what else my body could do.
“So while I was thinking about paint colors, you were thinking about another state.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“Then what was it like?”
He had no answer.
That was becoming familiar.
Linda looked uncomfortable.
“Jason.”
He looked at her.
“You should have told her.”
The words surprised me.
Not because they were wrong.
Because they were the first time Linda had clearly sided with reality instead of protecting her son.
Jason looked hurt.
“Mom.”
“No.”
She shook her head.
“You made a mistake.”
He stared at her.
“I was trying to protect everyone.”
Linda sighed.
“People always say that when they are afraid.”
The sentence landed differently coming from her.
Because she had spent months doing her own version of it.
I looked at the clock.
Grace needed to be picked up soon.
Tyler would need a snack.
Dinner would still need to happen.
The world did not stop because a marriage was struggling.
That was one of the cruelest things about ordinary life.
You could be standing in the middle of a personal earthquake and still need to remember to buy milk.
That afternoon, I picked up the kids.
Grace talked the entire drive home about a science project.
Tyler asked why clouds followed the car.
I answered him seriously.
Because he deserved an answer.
Because childhood was not supposed to pause while adults made mistakes.
When we got home, Jason was in the driveway.
He was fixing the loose hinge on the fence gate.
Something about seeing him there bothered me.
Not because it was bad.
Because it was normal.
He looked like my husband.
The man who made pancakes on Sundays.
The man who stayed up with me when Grace had pneumonia.
The man who knew I hated the sound of forks scraping ceramic plates.
The man who had also hidden decisions that affected all of us.
May you like
People were complicated enough to love and hurt you at the same time.
That was the part nobody prepared you for.
