CHAPTER 9 #2
I stood there in the kitchen, holding his phone, and felt a wave of relief wash over me. He’s clean. He’s trying. He’s good.
And then, immediately, the shame hit.
I was violating him. I was digging through his digital pockets while he washed the day off his skin. I was reducing him to a suspect in his own home.
And then, the suspicion crept back in, insidious and oily.
Deleted messages is empty.
Why is it empty?
Everyone has deleted messages. Spam. Verification codes. Wrong numbers.
If it’s perfectly empty, did he clear it?
Did he clear it before he got in the shower?
Is he smarter now?
I stared at the empty folder. The evidence of innocence became the evidence of a cover-up.
I felt disgusted. With him? No. With myself.
I was twisting reality to fit my fear. I was looking for a crime so desperately that I was inventing one.
I heard the water shut off upstairs.
Panic.
I swiped out of the messages. I locked the phone. I placed it back on the counter, exactly where it had been. I adjusted the angle so it lined up with the grout line of the tiles.
I turned back to the dishwasher. I grabbed a handful of silverware. My hands were shaking.
"Hey," Declan said, walking into the kitchen five minutes later. He was wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt, his hair wet and smelling of the shampoo I bought.
"Hey," I said. I didn't look at him. I couldn't. I felt like I had "SEARCH WARRANT" stamped on my forehead.
"Dishwasher full?" he asked, walking over.
"Almost," I said.
He picked up his phone from the counter. He didn't check it. He just put it in his pocket.
"Want to watch a movie?" he asked. "I rented that documentary you wanted to see."
"Sure," I said.
I looked at him. He smiled. It was open, guileless.
I hated myself. And I hated him for making me into this person—this paranoid, snooping, trembling warden of a prison I hadn't built.
* * *
Sex returned like a ghost slipping back into a room it used to haunt.
It had been two weeks since he came back. We slept in the same bed, but we had maintained a demilitarized zone in the middle.
But on a Saturday night, after the antiquing trip—which had been pleasant, if strained—we were lying in bed. The lights were out.
I felt him shift. I felt his hand move across the expanse of sheet.
He touched my hip.
It wasn't a grab. It was a question. His fingers rested there, light as a feather. Is this okay?
I froze. My body remembered him. My body wanted him. But my mind was a minefield.
If I let him touch me, am I forgiving him?
If I let him in, does he win?
But then I thought about the emptiness. I thought about the months of starvation. And I realized I was hungry.
I turned toward him.
"Okay," I whispered.
He moved slowly. He kissed me. It wasn't the passionate, devour-you kiss of our early days. It was slow. Reverent. Sad.
He touched my skin like he was memorizing it again. He murmured my name against my throat.
We moved together. It was awkward at first—two bodies trying to find a rhythm that had been broken. But then, the muscle memory took over. The familiar weight of him. The sound of his breath. The friction.
It was intense. It wasn't joyful sex; it was grief sex. It was a desperate attempt to bridge a canyon with skin and sweat.
When it was over, he collapsed against me, his face buried in the pillow next to my head.
And I started to cry.
I didn't mean to. The tears just leaked out, hot and silent, tracking into my hair.
I cried because it felt good.
I cried because it felt like him.
I cried because, for twenty minutes, I hadn't thought about Avery.
And then I cried because I knew that sex fixes nothing. It just drugs the pain for a while.
Declan heard my breath hitch. He lifted his head. He saw the tears in the moonlight.
He didn't ask "What's wrong?" He knew what was wrong.
He pulled me into his arms. He wrapped himself around me—legs, arms, chest—creating a cocoon. He held me tight. Not like glass this time. Like he was trying to hold my pieces together.
He kissed the top of my head.
"I've got you," he whispered. "I'm here. I'm right here."
I let him hold me. I let myself be small. I let myself pretend, just for tonight, that the bridge was solid.
* * *
Therapy session number two.
The atmosphere in Dr. Whitaker’s office was heavier this time. The pleasantries were over. We were excavating.
"Declan," Whitaker said, adjusting her glasses. She looked at him with that laser focus that made you feel like she could see your credit score and your childhood trauma simultaneously.
"We talked last week about the 'why,'" she said. "I want to dig deeper into that."
Declan nodded. He looked nervous. He was twisting his wedding ring—a ring he had put back on the moment he walked in the door that Friday.
"Okay," he said.
"You said you were scared," Whitaker said. "Scared of the pressure. Scared of the permanence."
"Yeah," Declan said. "I felt like... like the walls were closing in."
"So you sought out an affair," Whitaker said. "With a subordinate. Someone younger. Someone who looked up to you."
"Yes."
"I want you to answer this carefully," Whitaker said. She leaned forward. The room went very still.
"What did the affair give you that this relationship didn't?"
The question hung there.
I looked at Declan.
I needed to hear this. I needed to know what the currency was. Was it sex? Was it admiration? Was it just the thrill of the secret?
Declan shifted in his chair. He cleared his throat. He looked at the floor, then at the window, then at Whitaker.
He didn't speak.
One second. Two seconds. Three seconds.
The silence stretched. It became a physical thing, a wire pulled tight between us.
Why was he hesitating?
If the answer was "sex," say sex. If the answer was "ego," say ego.
Finally, he spoke.
"A feeling of..." He paused again. He looked at his hands. "Of being unburdened."
Unburdened.
"Go on," Whitaker said softly.
"With her," Declan said, his voice quiet, "there was no history. There was no mortgage. There was no expectation of who I was supposed to be. It felt... weightless."
He looked up, and his eyes met mine. There was no malice in them, just a terrible, crushing honesty.
"It felt like nothing counted," he said. "Like I could step out of my life, be someone else for a few hours, and none of it mattered. It was... simple."
I sat perfectly still. My hands were gripping the armrests of the beige loveseat so hard my knuckles were white.
Weightless.
He wanted to float.
And what did that make me?
If she was the helium balloon, floating away, unburdened and free... then I was the rock.
I was the gravity. I was the thing that held him down.
I was the mortgage. I was the history. I was the expectation.
He didn't say "She was better." He didn't say "She was prettier."
He said she was weightless.
I looked at him, and I saw the truth of our marriage laid out on the Persian rug.
I was the anchor.
I had always thought being the anchor was a good thing. I thought it meant I was essential. I thought it meant I kept the ship safe during the storm.
But anchors are heavy. Anchors are dragged along the bottom, through the mud and the dark. And when a ship wants to sail—when it wants to move, to be free, to catch the wind—what does it do?
It cuts the anchor loose.
"Weightless," I repeated. My voice was a whisper.
"Nora," Declan said, reaching for me. "I didn't mean—"
"No," I said. I pulled my hand away. "I think you meant exactly that."
I looked at Dr. Whitaker. She was watching me. She knew. She had asked the question to break the bone so it could be reset, but I wasn't sure if this bone could be reset.
"He wanted to float," I said to her. "And I made him sink."
"That's not what I said," Declan protested. "You make me... you ground me. You're my foundation."
"Foundation is just another word for the thing you stand on," I said. "Or the thing that buries you."
I stood up.
"I think we're done for today," I said.
"Nora, we have twenty minutes," Whitaker said gently.
"I'm done," I said.
I walked out of the office. I walked down the hall, past the waiting room, out into the cool Brookline afternoon.
Declan ran after me. "Nora! Wait!"
He caught me on the sidewalk. He grabbed my arm.
"Nora, please. I was just trying to be honest. You asked for honesty."
"I know," I said. I looked at him. I looked at the man who wanted to be weightless.
"You were honest," I said. "And I believe you. That's the problem."
I walked to the car. I got in. He got in the passenger side.
We drove home in silence. The glass house was still standing, but there was a new crack in the window, right in the centre of the view.
Weightless.
I drove, and I felt the weight of the car, the weight of the road, the weight of my own body. I felt heavy. I felt like I was made of lead.
And I wondered how long a man who wants to fly can stand being tied to the ground before he cuts the rope for good.