Chapter 5 #2
I squeezed my eyes shut. A few months. That meant all those breakfasts.
All those Sundays. Lara holding Marta. Lara at our house for Easter.
Lara adjusting my bracelet, suggesting dresses, telling me that men like Damien don't tolerate women who let themselves go.
For months I had been opening my door to her, setting out a cup for her, trusting her with my children, complaining about my exhaustion, while she knew the taste of my husband.
"I hate you," I whispered.
He didn't answer.
"Do you hear me? I hate you. I didn't know it was possible to love a person this much and want so badly for them to have never existed."
"Don't say things you'll regret."
"I already regret. Every day I spent waiting for you. Every 'I'm sorry' I said first. Every pound you made me hate myself for, while you were crawling to my sister."
"I wasn't crawling."
I looked at him. And laughed again, but this time without sound.
"Are you seriously defending the grammar of your affair right now?"
"I'm defending the truth."
"The truth is that you betrayed me."
"The truth is that I made a mistake."
"A mistake? Damien, a mistake is buying the wrong shoe size. You spent months peeling your conscience off and lying down with my sister."
He stood up abruptly.
"Enough."
"What 'enough'?"
"You're in no state to talk right now."
"And you're in a state to cheat?"
"I said enough."
"No. Now it's my turn to speak. I won't live with you."
He looked at me from above, and right there I saw the first real fracture. Not remorse. Not fear of losing love. For now, only the fury of a proprietor who'd just been told that the door he considered his might close from the inside.
"Careful."
"I won't."
"Niki."
"I don't know what it's called legally. Divorce. Separation. Death. I don't care. But I will not lie in the same bed with a man who—"
"No."
The word hit the kitchen louder than any broken dish.
I raised my head.
"What do you mean, no?"
"Divorce? No."
"I'm not asking permission."
"You'll have to."
Ice-cold dread washed over me.
"You're joking."
"Do I look like someone who jokes?"
He crouched in front of me so that our eyes were level. His face held no panic. It had become terrifying. Collected. The same face he wore when solving other people's crises, squeezing out other people's threats, making grown adults understand where their place was.
"Listen to me carefully. Right now you're shattered, you're furious, and you want to hurt me back. I understand. I'm even willing to overlook the dishes, the meltdown—"
"How noble."
"Don't interrupt."
"Or what?"
He leaned closer.
"Or I'll stop being patient."
My mouth went dry.
"There he is. The real you."
"The real me right now is holding our family together so you don't blow it to dust in twenty-four hours."
"You already blew it up!"
"No. I made a mistake. A heavy one. A dirty one. But the children will wake up tomorrow, go to daycare and school, come home, and need to see a mother and a father—not the rubble you've decided to create out of pride."
"Don't hide behind the children."
"I'm not hiding behind them. I'm thinking about them. Unlike you right now."
The blow was precise. Dirty. Devastating. I jerked as if slapped.
"You have no right."
"I do. I'm their father."
"A good father who broke their mother."
He went quiet. For a second. Only a second, but I saw: I'd landed.
"Don't say the word 'divorce' again," he said quietly.
"Or what?"
"Or I'll decide you can't cope."
"With what?"
"With yourself. With the children. With reality."
I stared at him and suddenly understood: I wasn't standing on the edge of my marriage.
I was standing on the edge of a cage and seeing the bars for the first time.
They were golden, beautiful, decorated with children's drawings on the fridge, white cups, expensive dresses, and a man who could kiss his daughter's temple as if nothing in the world were holier than family. But the bars were real.
"Are you threatening me?"
"I'm warning you."
"After what you did?"
"Especially after what I did. Because right now you're dangerous to yourself."
I started shaking again, but differently now. Not with hysteria. With revulsion.
"You won't get me back through fear."
"I never lost you."
I rose slowly. My legs trembled, my palm bled, shards lay everywhere, but inside me—amid all this screaming and broken porcelain—it suddenly went very quiet.
"You did lose me," I said. "You just haven't realized it yet."
Damien watched me for a long time. Then he picked up the one surviving cup—the last from the set—placed it on the table, and for some reason smiled. Tiredly. Harshly. Almost angrily.
"Then let me explain something to you too, Niki.
I will not give you a divorce. Not now. Not in this state.
Not at the dictation of Lara, your hurt feelings, or your insecurities.
You are my wife. The children are mine. The house is mine.
And as long as I decide where my family is safe, you will not walk out of it. "
I didn't answer. Couldn't. At that very second, the lock on the front door beeped.
One short signal.
Then another.
Someone had opened the house with their own key.
Damien turned his head.
So did I.
In the kitchen doorway stood Marta in her pink jacket, stuffed bunny under her arm. Behind her was a pale Tim with his backpack, and beside him a flustered Sarah, who was probably trying to explain something, but it was already too late.
My daughter wasn't looking at us.
She was looking at the broken dishes, the blood on my palm, and her father standing in the middle of the shards.
"Mommy," Marta whispered, and her voice trembled. "Did Daddy punish you?"