Chapter 12 #2
"I don't know. I'm not a saint and I'm not quiet. I want to grab you and say you're my wife, that I won't sign a divorce, that I'll drag us out of this with my teeth if I have to. That hasn't gone anywhere inside me."
I turned to him. Tears were already running down my neck, under the sweater's collar.
"Then say it. Why pretend?"
He stepped closer. One step. Stopped.
"Because if I say only that right now, you'll hear a cage. And I want you someday to hear a home."
"A home? Are you serious?"
"Yes. A home. Not this box with windows. You, the children, our table, your damn mugs, Tim's pencils, Marta's bunny soups. I destroyed it. And yes, I'll fight for it. As best I can. But I'm trying not to fight against you."
"And if I still choose divorce?"
His face went hard, almost frightening.
"I'll be against it."
"There."
"Not because you don't have the right. But because I'm still alive, you're still here, the children still wake up in our house, and I'm not ready to lie down beside my own shit and say: well then, I deserved it, let her go.
Yes, I deserved it. But I won't surrender you to the aftermath of my own filth without a fight. "
"You keep saying 'won't surrender' as though I'm a thing."
"Again," he said hoarsely. "Because I can't sterilize myself to match your pain overnight.
I'm possessive. I'm jealous. I'm a heavy, accustomed-to-command man.
And I betrayed you exactly as that man. Now I'll have to learn to be different—not in words but in my own bones.
But if you're expecting me to become the polite ex who gracefully opens the door, I'll be lying: I won't."
Inside me, something painfully jerked. Hatred and a wild, shameful relief locked together so tightly I nearly choked.
He wasn't promising a fairy tale. Wasn't playing the reformed angel.
Before me sat the same Damien, only with his skin torn off and his dirt exposed, and it wasn't easier because of that, but it was truer.
"Were you with her when Marta was sick?" I asked.
He closed his eyes.
There was my answer.
"Once. After the doctor left. You'd fallen asleep with her in the nursery. I said I was going to the office."
I retched. I made it to the small sink in the winter garden's utility corner, bent over, but all that came up was bile and emptiness. Damien took a step, then stopped. Didn't approach. Didn't touch. Just stood behind me, and I could hear his breathing—heavy, angry, controlled.
"Don't come near me," I rasped.
"I won't."
"I hate you."
I washed my face from the small faucet, wiped my mouth with a paper towel, and returned, holding the wall. My legs were cotton, but I didn't sit. If I sat, I'd fall apart. If he saw me fall apart, he'd want to put me back together. And I was no longer his thing to fix after he'd broken me himself.
"If I hadn't seen the cameras, would you have stopped?" I asked.
Damien was silent so long I lived three deaths.
"No," he said at last. "Not right away."
My heart fell quietly. Almost soundlessly. So this is what the last hope looks like: not a dramatic cry, not thunder, not music. Just a short "no," and inside you a lamp goes out—the one under which you were still trying to make out your former husband.
"Thank you."
He flinched.
"For what?"
"For not doing me the favor of lying."
"Niki..."
"Quiet."
He went quiet.
"I'm going upstairs now. Don't follow me. Don't stand by the door. Don't send water, pills, blankets, or your remorse. If you truly want even a tiny chance someday, let me exist in a place where you're not."
His face twisted. Not theatrically. Painfully.
"I'll go outside."
"Do whatever you want. Just not behind me."
"I won't follow you."
"Remember that feeling. You'll need it again."
I headed for the staircase. On the third step my knees buckled and I grabbed the railing. Damien lurched. I heard it. I didn't even see him, but I heard it with my whole body.
"Don't," I said without turning.
He stopped.
It was right. So right it hurt even more.
In the bedroom I closed the door and slid to the floor.
I was shaking—silently, in large tremors, terrifyingly.
I pressed my palms to my chest as if I could hold my heart from falling apart, but it was crumbling somewhere inside anyway, softly, sickeningly, without blood.
Four months. Lara's apartment. My body as his alibi.
Marta with bronchitis. His "office." Her remarks.
His silence. My trust, so enormous they could have paved a road from my house to her bed.
Downstairs the front door slammed.
Damien had left.
I didn't know where. The yard, the garage, the car, his own rage. I didn't care and cared at the same time. That was the most infuriating thing: he could destroy me, and part of me still listened for his footsteps.
The phone vibrated a few minutes later. On the screen flashed the intercom call.
I didn't want to answer. I honestly wanted to hurl the phone at the wall and stay on the floor until evening, when the children would return me to the shape of a mother.
But the call kept coming, insistent, nervous, like a finger pressing on a bruise.
I opened the gate camera.
Lara.
With a suitcase.
Without the red dress, without the bracelet on her wrist, in dark glasses and with the face of a person who'd come for the first time not to win but to pay at least a penny on a bill she herself had torn to pieces.
I stared at the screen, and inside me pain rose again. No longer hot. Cold, straight, precise—like a blade that had been sitting in the freezer a long time and was finally pressed to the throat.
I pressed the intercom button.
"Leaving?"
Lara raised her face to the camera.
"Yes."
"Then why did you come?"
She took off the glasses. On her cheek the mark from my palm was still dark.
"I need to tell you one thing."
"About him?"
"No."
I laughed. Quietly. Frightening even to myself.
"Amazing. It turns out there are knives that aren't about him."
Lara closed her eyes.
"Open the gate, please. I won't come inside the house. I'll say it and leave."
I stared at her and understood I could refuse. Probably should. But behind her stood a taxi driver, in the trunk a suitcase, and inside me still lived a girl who once shared a bedroom, secrets, Mom's hair clips, and one last name with this woman.
I pressed the button.
And understood that sometimes you open the door not because you've forgiven.
But because you want to look into the eyes of the person who helped you die.