Chapter 2
HAPPINESS BURSTING
“How about a drive to the coast? Like the old days.”
I say it into my coffee, not looking at him.
Saturday morning, the kitchen bright with sun, Caleb at the counter scrolling through his phone with one hand and eating toast with the other.
He got back from Charlotte Thursday. Two days in the same house and this is the most ambitious thing I’ve tried—a question with a no built right into it.
I’m already bracing for the forced smile and the maybe next weekend.
“Yeah.” He sets the phone down. Face up, screen visible, like it doesn’t matter who sees. “Let’s do it.”
My whole body goes still. “Really?”
“Really.” He tears off a piece of toast and grins at me, and my breath catches because he looks like him again—the version from before, the one who used to suggest the coast trip himself. “You still have that playlist? The one with all the Lauryn Hill?”
“You hated that playlist.”
“I never hated it.” He laughs and pushes off the counter and opens the garage door, already moving. “I’ll grab the cooler.”
I stand in the kitchen with my mug halfway to my mouth, heart hammering.
He said yes. He just said yes. I set the coffee down and I’m pulling turkey and cheese from the fridge, slicing tomatoes, wrapping sandwiches in wax paper and grinning like an idiot at the cutting board.
Maybe I’ve been making this bigger in my head.
The distance, the phone calls, the missed weekends—maybe I’ve been so focused on what’s wrong that I stopped seeing what’s still here.
He remembered the playlist. He went for the cooler before I even finished asking.
Maybe everything is fine and I’ve just been lonely enough to turn it into a crisis.
In the garage, Caleb hauls the cooler down from the shelf and blows dust off the lid. “Haven’t used this since that barbecue with Dave and Shirley.”
“When Dave set the deck on fire.” I hand him the sandwiches and our fingers brush and he doesn’t pull away. My skin buzzes where he touched me. He flips the cooler open and packs it—ice on the bottom, waters along the sides, sandwiches in the middle—careful, deliberate.
“Remember the inflatable raft?” I lean against the car, watching him.
“Feat of engineering.” He winks at me over the cooler lid and my stomach flips. I feel twenty-four again. I want to grab him by the shirt and kiss him right here in this dusty garage.
“Had a hole in it by noon.”
“Gave it character.” He laughs—full, surprised, the real one—and it lands in my chest and stays.
This is the laugh I heard through his office door Tuesday night, the one that wrecked me because it wasn’t mine.
But right now it is. Right now he’s grinning at me with toast crumbs on his shirt and I could cry with how good this feels.
He connects his phone to the car speakers and the playlist fills the garage—90s R&B thumping through the concrete floor. He’s humming. Humming. I toss the towels in the back seat and think this is us. This is still us.
We climb in. He backs out of the driveway and his right hand finds my knee—warm, easy, like his body remembers even when the rest of him has been somewhere else.
I put my hand over his. Close my eyes. The sun is on my face and his thumb is moving in small circles against my knee and I can breathe for the first time in months.
His phone rings through the speakers.
The caller ID flashes across the dash: Unknown Number.
His hand lifts off my knee. “Let me just—”
“It’s Saturday.” I keep my voice light but my pulse is already climbing.
“Two seconds. I swear.” He hits the green button before I can respond. “Hey—yeah, hold on.” The phone comes off the mount. He kills the speakers and Lauryn Hill cuts off mid-note. “Yeah. No, I’m—hold on.”
He pulls over. We’re still on our street. Our mailbox is right there in the side mirror.
“I need to take this inside.” He squeezes my wrist—quick, already looking away. “One minute.”
Through the windshield I watch him walk up the driveway, shoulders hunched around the phone. The front door opens. Shuts.
I sit in the passenger seat with my seatbelt on. The engine idles. Behind me, the ice shifts and cracks, settling into itself. One minute goes by. Three. A lawn mower starts somewhere down the block. Five minutes. Seven.
The front door opens and my stomach drops before my brain catches up, because I can see it in his walk. The looseness is gone. His jaw is tight and the overnight bag is in his hand—the same bag he unpacked two days ago.
He opens the back door and sets it on the seat next to the cooler. Right next to the sandwiches I made twenty minutes ago.
“Mar, I’m sorry.”
My eyes burn. “No.”
“Something came up with the Sinclair account. They need me to sign off in—”
“It’s Saturday.” My voice breaks on the word and I hate it.
“I know.” He rubs the back of his neck, looking at the steering wheel instead of me. “I’ll make it up to you. Next weekend, I’ll—”
“You said that three weekends ago.” I’m gripping the seatbelt strap so hard my knuckles ache.
Twenty minutes ago his hand was on my knee.
Twenty minutes ago I was thinking maybe everything is fine.
My throat is closing and I can feel my face getting hot and I don’t want to cry, I don’t want to give this moment that, but it’s coming anyway.
“We were in the car, Caleb. We were on our way.”
His mouth flattens. He expected me to nod and wave and unpack the cooler quietly so he could leave without having to look at what he’s doing to me.
“I don’t have a choice, Mara.”
“You had a choice ten minutes ago.” I swipe at my eyes with the heel of my hand, fast, angry.
He leans across the console and presses his lips to my forehead—quick, dry, already pulling away. I sit frozen through it because if I open my mouth right now I will say something that blows this marriage apart, and I’m not ready.
“I’ll call you tonight.” He grabs the bag, gets out, walks to his Audi without turning around. The door shuts. The engine starts.
I watch the car pull away. Turn the corner. Gone.
The street is empty. My seatbelt is still buckled. The sandwiches I made are going warm behind me.
I sit there until the sun shifts off my face, then drive the car back into the garage. Then I go inside and put everything away. The kitchen looks exactly like it did an hour ago, before I let myself believe today would be different.
My phone buzzes on the counter. Sloane: Can’t do Tuesday lunch—my guy surprised me with a getaway!! Will tell you EVERYTHING when I’m back ????
I type Have fun! and add a heart emoji. Put the phone face-down. Press both palms flat on the granite and stand there until my breathing evens out.
Everybody leaves. That’s the part I keep forgetting.
“I unpacked the cooler and put everything away and cleaned the kitchen and then I sat on the floor and cried for forty-five minutes.”
My therapist Lena watches me from the chair across from mine. Hands folded, eyes steady. She doesn’t do the sympathetic head-tilt. She doesn’t rush to fill the silence. I’m grateful for it because if one more person gives me that soft, pitying look, I’m going to scream.
“Not even dramatic crying.” I try to laugh but it comes out scraped raw. “Just sitting on the floor. Leaking.”
“Tell me about the floor. What happened right before?”
“I put the last sandwich in the fridge. Closed the door. And then my legs just—gave out. Like my body decided we were done standing.” I press my thumbnail into my palm.
“He was right there, Lena. An hour earlier he was packing ice and humming and holding my knee in the car. And then one phone call and he just—left. Packed the same bag he unpacked two days ago and drove away and I stood in the kitchen like an idiot who just got stood up for prom.”
“You keep calling yourself stupid. You said it last session, too—stupid for not seeing it, stupid for trying.”
“Because it is stupid. I packed a cooler like a picnic was going to fix my marriage.”
“Okay, stop.” Lena holds up one hand. Not aggressive—firm. “Making a bid for connection with your husband is not stupid. That’s healthy. That’s what people in marriages are supposed to do. The problem is not that you packed the cooler. The problem is what happened after.”
My jaw tightens. I know she’s right but it doesn’t feel right. It feels like I handed him a test he didn’t even know he was taking and then fell apart when he failed it.
“I hear you doing it again,” Lena says. “Right now. You’re rearranging this in your head so it’s your fault. I shouldn’t have asked. I shouldn’t have expected anything. I set myself up. Am I close?”
Too close. My eyes sting and I look at the rug.
“Mara. You asked your husband to spend a Saturday with you. That is a normal thing to want. His reaction to that—the phone call, the bag, the leaving—that’s not about you asking wrong. That’s about him choosing to leave.”
“He said it was work.”
“Do you believe that?”
The question drops through me. I open my mouth to say yes, of course—but my tongue won’t move.
Because I think about the call on Tuesday night, the laugh I haven’t earned in months, pouring out of him behind a closed door.
I think about how fast he packed that bag, how he already knew where it was, like leaving is a routine he’s comfortable with.
“I don’t know,” I say, and it’s the most honest thing I’ve said in weeks.
Lena nods slowly. “That’s important. Sit with that. You don’t have to answer it today, but I don’t want you to talk yourself out of it before our next session. Your gut is telling you something and you keep overriding it.”
“Because the alternative is—” I stop.
“Is what?”
“That he’s not working. That he’s somewhere else. With someone else. And I’ve been packing coolers and making playlists for a man who’s already gone.” My voice cracks on the last word and I press the heels of my hands against my eyes. The leather chair creaks under me.
“Here’s what I want you to try this week.
” Lena leans forward, elbows on her knees.
“When you catch yourself making excuses for someone else’s behavior—explaining it away, softening it, finding a reason it’s actually your fault—I want you to pause and ask one question.
Just one. Is this what’s actually happening, or am I catastrophizing? ”
I drop my hands. “That’s a terrible question.”
“Why?”
“Because I already know which one I’ve been choosing.”
“Good.” The corner of her mouth moves—not quite a smile, more like recognition. “That’s the work. You’ve been writing a version of this story that keeps you comfortable and in pain, and it’s costing you. The cooler isn’t the problem. The excuses you make after are.”
The clock on the shelf ticks softly. My chest feels scraped out.
“And Sloane?” Lena asks. “You mentioned she canceled again.”
“She texted twenty minutes after he left. Canceled lunch. Her boyfriend surprised her with a trip.” My sneakers squeak against the hardwood as I shift in the chair.
“She’s been doing this for weeks. Every conversation is about him.
What he did for her, where he took her, how present he is.
” I pause. “She used that word while I was telling her my husband can’t sit through dinner with me. ”
“Have you told Sloane how that feels?”
“No. Because she’d give me the face—you know, the concerned face—and she’d say I’m so sorry, you deserve better, and then she’d check her phone under the table and change the subject. She doesn’t actually want to know. She just wants to have asked.”
“So you’ve got a husband who leaves the room and a best friend who stays in it but stops listening.” Lena lets that sit for a beat. “And your response to both is the same. Try harder. Show up more. Don’t ask the uncomfortable question.”
“What’s the uncomfortable question?”
“Why are they leaving.” Lena’s voice is steady and quiet and it lands in the center of my chest. “Not how do I get them to stay. Why are they leaving. Because you’ve been treating this like a performance problem—if you were a better wife, a more fun friend, if you packed a better cooler—and I think you know that’s not what this is. ”
I stare at her. The coffee machine in the hallway hisses.
“You’re telling me to stop trying.”
“I’m telling you to stop trying harder at something that isn’t working and start paying attention to why it isn’t working.
That’s different.” She sits back. “This week. One question. Every time you catch yourself smoothing something over or making an excuse. Is this what’s actually happening?
Write it down if you have to. Bring it back next Tuesday. ”
I nod. My throat is too tight to say anything.
I drive home with the windows down and the radio off.
At a red light, I pick up my phone and scroll through my texts with Caleb.
Two weeks of me reaching out, him responding in monosyllables.
I switch to Sloane’s thread. Canceled plans stacked on canceled plans, zero follow-up questions about my life.
Is this what’s actually happening, or am I catastrophizing?
Someone honks behind me. I put the phone down and drive.
The house is dark when I pull in. His car isn’t in the driveway. The kitchen is clean and quiet. The counter speaker is still queued up where I left it that morning. I press play and Lauryn Hill fills the room and I stand at the sink, staring at the yard going gold in the late light.
Lena’s question is still in my mind. And for the first time, I don’t push it away.