CHAPTER 17 #2
Then I reach into my bag. I unzip the front pocket. I pull out the sonogram.
The fake one. The "jellybean."
I look at it. I trace the edge of the thermal paper. I remember Declan’s face when we put it on the fridge. The joy. The possibility.
I place the photo on the table, right next to the key.
They belong together. The home and the future. Both of them abandoned. Both of them things I can no longer claim.
I stare at the arrangement. It looks like an altar. A sacrifice left for a god who stopped listening.
But then, I stop.
I look at the sonogram. The grainy, grey blur.
If I leave this, he will see it. He will think about the baby. He will think about the loss. He will construct a narrative where he is the grieving father, the victim of a tragedy. He will make it about the sadness.
I don't want him to be sad. I want him to see.
I pick up the sonogram. I slide it back into my pocket. I will keep it. It is mine. It is the only proof I have that I almost had a different life.
I reach into my wallet. I pull out a different photo.
It’s small, creased at the corner. It’s a photo of us. Taken three years ago, on the harbour.
We are sitting on a bench. The wind is blowing my hair across my face. Declan is laughing, his arm tight around my shoulders, looking at me with an expression of absolute, unclouded delight.
We look solid. We look unbreakable.
I place this photo on the table next to the key.
I want him to see this. I want him to wake up, come down these stairs, and look at the thing he actually destroyed.
Not a potential future, but a concrete past. I want him to look at his own face in this photo and realize that the man who loved me like that is gone, and he is the one who killed him.
I stare at the arrangement. The key. The photo of us.
It is better. It is the truth.
I should explain. I should leave a note.
I see a pen on the counter, next to a stack of unpaid bills. I pick it up. I pull a notepad closer. The top sheet has a grocery list on it in Declan’s messy scrawl: Coffee. Eggs. Beer.
I hover the pen over the paper.
Declan,
I’m leaving because...
Because what? Because you cheated? No. We survived that. We tried to survive that.
Because of the baby? No. We survived that, too.
Because you don’t love me?
No. He does love me. I know he does. He loves me the way a drowning man loves a life raft. He loves me because I keep him afloat.
I look at the key. I look at the photo.
I put the pen down.
There is nothing to say that he doesn’t already know. If he looks at that table and doesn’t understand why I’m gone, then no letter I write will make him understand. The explanation is in the silence. The explanation is in the empty space beside him in the bed.
He knows. Deep down, in the part of him that he covers up with noise and jokes and bravado, he knows.
He knows that he came back because he had nowhere else to go. He knows that I was the safety net, not the destination.
And he knows that nets eventually break.
I pick up my bag.
The weight of it pulls at my shoulder. It feels heavy, but it also feels right. It feels like consequences.
I walk to the front door. I put my hand on the knob.
I pause.
I look back.
The kitchen is dark, but I can see the outline of the table. I can see the glint of the key. I can see the pale square of the photo. I can see the blue walls that I painted with so much hope.
This was supposed to be it. This was supposed to be the destination.
I used to think love was the safest place on earth.
I thought that if you loved someone enough, if you built a sturdy enough house, if you were patient and kind and good, you would be safe. I thought love was a fortress.
But it’s not. Love is just a glass house, and I have spent five years handing him stones.
I turn the knob. The mechanism is cold.
I open the door. The night air rushes in—November air, biting and raw. It smells of the ocean. It smells of low tide and salt and freedom.
I step out onto the stoop.
I pull the door shut behind me.
Click.
The sound is final. It is the period at the end of a sentence that has run on for too long.
I don’t look back.
I walk to my car, unlock it, and throw the bag into the passenger seat. I get in. I turn the key in the ignition. The engine coughs, then catches.
I pull away from the curb. I drive down the narrow street, past the rowhouses that all look the same, past the sleeping families, past the life I am dismantling.
I drive past Sully’s Tap, where we had our first real date. The neon sign is buzzing, a lonely red eye in the dark.
I drive past the turn for the Harbourwalk, where he told me he wanted a boy.
I drive past Boston Medical Center. I see the ambulance bay lights flashing—red, white, red, white. The machine is still running. Someone is bleeding. Someone is being saved.
But not me. Not tonight.
I merge onto I-93. The city falls away behind me, a cluster of lights shrinking in the rearview mirror.
I take the exit for I-95 North.
The highway opens up. It is a river of black asphalt cutting through the dark. There are no other cars. Just me and the white lines flashing by. Zip. Zip. Zip.
To the left and right, the pine trees stand guard, tall and black against the indigo sky.
I don't turn on the radio. The silence is enormous. It fills the car. It fills my head.
I don't know where I'm going. I have a vague idea—north. Maine. Maybe further. Somewhere cold. Somewhere where the ocean is wilder and the air is cleaner.
I don't have a plan. I don't have a job lined up. I don't have a home.
But for the first time in five years, I don't have a weight on my chest.
I check the rearview mirror one last time. The city is gone. The rowhouse is gone. Declan is gone.
He is sleeping in the bed I made. He will wake up in a few hours. He will reach for me. He will find cold sheets.
He will go downstairs. He will find the key. He will look at the photo.
And he will know.
I grip the steering wheel. My knuckles are white.
I am alone. I am broken. I am terrified.
But I am not second place anymore.
I press my foot down on the gas. The car surges forward, eating up the miles, driving into the dark, driving into the nothing, driving into the rest of my life.