15. Ellie
— ? —
Ellie
I pack like the house is still coming down.
Clothes into the suitcase without folding them.
Handfuls of shirts and jeans and underwear, the green dress from my birthday, the sweater I was wearing on our first date.
I don’t sort them. I don’t think about what I might need.
I just grab and shove and grab again, filling the suitcase until the zipper barely closes.
I don’t look at the bed. I know what’s on it. His pillow with the crease still in it from two nights ago, the one I smoothed flat this morning and then put back, and my side with the sheets twisted from six hours of not sleeping. I’ve made that bed every morning for a year. I leave it.
The bathroom next. Toiletries swept off the counter into a plastic bag, my toothbrush and my face wash and the expensive shampoo he bought me because I mentioned once that I liked the smell.
The bottle is still half full. I almost leave it.
I take it anyway, because it’s mine now, because I’m not leaving anything of myself in this house.
The closet. His shirts on one side, mine on the other, our clothes hanging together.
This could be a normal marriage where people share closet space and fight about who uses more hangers.
I take my things and I don’t look at his.
I don’t look at the jacket he wore the night he proposed, the one that still smells like him when I bury my face in it.
I don’t look at the boots by the door, the hat on the hook, the watch on the dresser that his grandmother left him.
I take what’s mine and I leave what’s his and I don’t let myself think about the difference.
The kitchen.
Aunt June’s recipe box is on the counter where I put it back after Daphne moved it for her juicer. I pick it up and hold it against my chest for a second, feeling the weight of it, the worn wood corners, the cards inside in her handwriting that I’ve been reading since I was seven years old.
This was hers. Before anything else in my life, before Jacob, before the ranch, before any of it, this was hers.
And so was the quilt.
I go to the living room and pull the quilt off the back of the couch.
Blue and white, hand-stitched, older than I am.
She made it for her own hope chest when she was sixteen.
I fold it carefully, the only thing I’m careful with, smoothing the edges the way she taught me, and lay it on top of my clothes.
These are the only two things in this house that were mine before he was. Everything else in it came with him or came after him, and I’m leaving all of it.
I stand in the foyer with the suitcase at my feet and the recipe box under my arm and the quilt over my shoulder.
The tree is still there, branches reaching across the floor, roots trailing dirt and insulation.
It’s one of the old oaks from the front, the one the swing hung from, and I’ve stood under it in the evenings with a glass of tea and watched him walk up from the barn more nights than I can count.
Through the hole in the roof I can see the sky going gold.
In a few hours it’ll be dark, and I’ll be somewhere else, and this will all be real in a way it isn’t yet.
I could put the box back on the counter.
I could go upstairs and unpack and make the bed and be here when the roofers come, and be the wife who stayed, and nobody in this town would ever know how close I came.
I stand there with the handle in reach and I think about it for exactly as long as it takes to remember the door closing.
Jacob finds me before I can move.
He stops in the doorway from the kitchen.
There’s a cut on his cheekbone, still bleeding sluggishly, and dust in his hair and on his shoulders and ground into the lines of his face.
He looks ten years older than he did this morning.
He looks like he hasn’t slept in days, even though I know he slept on the couch last night, one floor under me, and climbed the stairs once and didn’t knock.
He looks at the suitcase. He looks at the box. He looks at the quilt. Then he looks at me. It’s the face he had at the far shed with his hand out under the calf’s belly, waiting to catch what’s coming.
“What are you doing?”
“Leaving.”
“Ellie, there’s a hole in the roof. You can’t just walk out of a house with a hole in the roof.”
“Watch me.”
I bend for the handle and he crosses the foyer in three strides, stepping over branches, kicking debris out of his way, and his hand closes over mine on the grip.
His skin is warm and rough and familiar, and I hate how much I notice it even now.
I hate that my body still wants to lean into him.
I hate that after everything, after two months of being ignored and dismissed and made to feel crazy, I still love him so much it’s hard to breathe.
“Don’t do this.” His voice is low and rough. “We can figure it out. We can talk.”
“We’ve been talking since April and nothing changes.”
“I’ll make it change.”
“How?” I try to pull the suitcase free and he doesn’t let go. His knuckles are white on the handle, right next to mine, and I can feel him shaking. Or maybe that’s me. His other hand comes up toward my face and stops halfway, and hangs there, and goes back down. “You don’t even know what’s wrong.”
“Then tell me. Tell me what I did.”
I look at him. This man I married, who I watched from across every room in this town for years, too scared to say a word until two glasses of champagne said it for me. This man who holds me like I’m everything and treats me like I’m nothing, who shows up for everyone but me.
“I can’t do that for you, Jacob.” My voice comes out tired. So fucking tired. “I can’t hand you the answers and then stand here and watch you still get it wrong.”
“I won’t get it wrong.”
“You’ve been getting it wrong since she got here.”
“Then give me a chance to fix it.”
“I’ve given you chances.” I pull harder on the suitcase and this time he lets go.
His hand falls to his side and he stands there looking at me.
“Every single day since she got here I’ve given you chances.
Every time I told you she was doing it on purpose and you called me petty.
Every time I tried to talk to you and you were too busy.
Every Friday you canceled on me, every dinner I ate alone, every night I went to sleep wondering if you even noticed I was there.
” I heft the suitcase. It’s heavier than I expected.
Everything I own that matters, and it weighs less than twenty pounds.
“I’m out of chances, Jacob. I’m out of faith that anything is ever going to change. ”
“Where are you going?”
“The Bellingers’. They have a guest room.” I shift the recipe box under my arm. “Don’t follow me.”
I walk toward the door and he moves to block it.
His body fills the frame, big and solid and immovable, and his eyes are wild in a way I’ve never seen.
Jacob Walker doesn’t beg. Jacob Walker doesn’t ask.
Jacob Walker states his position and waits for the world to come to him, because it always has.
But right now he’s standing in my way and he’ll stand there forever, he’ll let the house fall down around us both before he lets me walk out.
“Please.” His voice cracks on the word. “Ellie. Stay.”
I’ve heard him say please before. In the study, when Daphne first arrived. In the foyer, an hour ago. But he’s never said it like this. The word is ripped out of him. It’s costing him everything he has.
My heart twists so hard it hurts. I love him. I love him so much it’s in my bones, and I can’t shake it no matter how hard I try.
But love isn’t enough. I’ve learned that now.
“I can’t.” I step around him. My hand finds the doorknob. “I’m sorry.”
“What do you need me to do?”
I stop. I don’t turn around.
I should tell him. I should say it: I need you to love me out loud, I’m tired of being the only one who says it, I’ve been alone in this for a year. I should give him a roadmap, step by step, everything he’s done wrong and everything he could do right.
But I’m tired of being the one who does the work. I’m tired of teaching a grown man how to be a husband. I’m tired of asking for the bare minimum and watching him fail to meet it.
“I don’t know.”
I open the door and I walk out. The knob is warm from the sun coming through the hole in the roof, and I notice that, and I notice that I’m noticing it, and I know I’m going to remember the temperature of this doorknob for the rest of my life.
Behind me I hear him not follow. I hear him stand exactly where I left him, and I know the shape he’s standing in, hands at his sides, and I don’t turn around to check.
The porch is still standing, somehow. The steps are intact.
The porch rail is gone, torn off and lying in the yard with the swing on top of it.
My car is where I left it this morning, covered in dust and debris but whole.
I pop the trunk and lift the suitcase in, settle it next to the spare tire, and I’m putting the recipe box in the passenger seat, the seat where he should be, the seat that’s been empty on every drive that mattered this year, when I hear Daphne’s voice from the porch.
“Jacob? The roof in my wing is leaking. Where am I supposed to sleep?”
I look back.
She’s standing in the doorway with one hand on his arm, looking up at him with those wide green eyes, and he’s standing there with his shoulders hunched and his face turned away from me. Then she spots me watching. Her eyes meet mine across the yard.
Her mouth curves.
“No way.” She says it loud enough to carry. Loud enough that I can hear every word, every fake note of surprise and concern. “She left without you? You poor man. Poor cowboy. After everything you just went through.”
I get in the car.
I put the key in the ignition. I start the engine.
I put it in reverse and I back down the drive, and I don’t look at the house, and I don’t look at him standing in the door, and I don’t look at her hand on his arm or her smile or one single piece of any of it, because if I look I’ll stop, and if I stop I’ll stay.
The lane is a mile to the county road. I’ve driven it every morning for a year, and I drive it now with both hands on the wheel and my eyes on the ruts, and I don’t let myself look in the mirror once.
The road stretches out ahead of me, covered in debris, trees down on both sides, and I drive into the mess without looking back, and I don’t know where I’m going, and it doesn’t matter, because it’s away from him.