Chapter 17 Apology Owed #2
"I know." I want to reach for her, but I hold myself still. "And instead I treated your work like an inconvenience. Something to fit in around the edges of what I thought was important."
"You helped me move the equipment." Her voice softens slightly. "That Saturday before our anniversary. You stayed all afternoon even when Marisol sent that message."
"I remember." It's one of the few good memories from those months. Carrying heavy boxes together, arranging the workspace exactly how she wanted it, feeling for a few hours like we were on the same team again.
"I thought that was the beginning of something." She wraps her arms around herself. "I thought you were finally seeing what I'd been trying to show you. And then Thursday came, and you didn't come home, and..."
"I wanted that afternoon, too." I can still remember how pleased she was when the equipment finally stood where she wanted it. "Then I acted as though showing up once meant I could keep letting you down afterward."
"Why?" The question is raw, unguarded. "Why couldn't you just talk to me?"
"Because I was afraid you'd see what I saw." I make myself hold her gaze. "A man who was failing at everything that mattered. A son who couldn't fill his father's shoes. A husband who didn't deserve the woman he'd married."
"So instead of letting me see you struggle, you let me watch you choose someone else to confide in." Sera's voice breaks slightly. "Every fear you couldn't share with me, every worry that kept you up at night, you gave to her instead."
"Yes." There's no point in denying it. "I told myself it was professional. That confiding in a business consultant was different from confiding in my wife. But it wasn't different. I was giving her the intimacy I should have been giving you."
"Not physical." Sera shakes her head. "I know nothing physical happened."
"No." I'm grateful she believes that, at least. "But emotional. Yes. I let her into spaces that belonged to you."
"And she used every one of them against us." Sera sinks into the chair near her workbench, suddenly exhausted. "She knew exactly where we were vulnerable because you showed her."
"I'm sorry." I pull a spare stool closer and sit beside her chair, close enough that our knees almost touch. "For all of it. For the dinners I missed and the promises I broke. For every time you asked me to see your work and I found something more urgent to do instead."
She doesn't respond, just watches me with those tired, knowing eyes.
"Our anniversary." I make myself say it. "I promised you Thursday at seven. I knew what that dinner meant to you. You weren't asking for some spare hour I might find. We'd made a plan."
"I sent you one text." She rubs at a crease in her skirt without smoothing it. "At half past seven. The dinner was ready. I didn't want to nag."
She shouldn't have needed to remind me. I had made a promise, and I left her to wonder whether I would keep it. The thought of her sitting at that table, watching her phone, waiting for a response that never came, makes my chest ache.
"I should have called before that." I lean forward, elbows on my knees, needing her to understand.
"I knew I was running late. I knew I should tell you.
But I kept thinking I could finish one more thing and still make it.
I kept putting off the call because I wanted to be able to say I was leaving, and I never did. "
"And then you got sick." She lets go of the crease, leaving the fabric rumpled against her knee.
"I did. I remember feeling worse as the afternoon went on.
" I hold her gaze, refusing to use the hours I can't remember to excuse the ones I can.
"I kept thinking I should call you. Instead I kept working, hoping I could finish.
I let seven pass without telling you what was happening. That was my choice."
"Your mother came." Sera's hands are still in her lap, her fingers twisted together. "She brought the earrings your parents chose for me. She ate with me at the table I'd set for us."
"I know." My mother told me everything, her voice heavy with disappointment. "She stayed the whole night. She was there when you came back from the office. She helped you pack."
Sera looks down at her hands. "I couldn't keep being optional. That's what it felt like. Like I was something you'd get around to when everything else was handled."
"You were never optional." I hear the uselessness of what I meant beside what she lived through. "But I treated you like you were. I treated our marriage like something that would wait for me, that would still be there whenever I finally had time for it."
"You had time for her." She takes her hands out of her lap and lays them on the arms of the chair, as if she needs the room to hold still.
"All those late nights. All those conversations about the estate and your fears and whether your father regretted leaving you in charge. You found time for all of that."
"With her, I could keep talking about work." I hear how pathetic it sounds, but I say it anyway. "I could admit I was struggling with the estate without answering for what I was doing to you. She wasn't waiting for me at home. You were."
Sera looks at me for a long moment.
"I spent years loving that you knew me better than anyone. Then the first time I was truly afraid I was failing, I started avoiding the one person who would see it."
Her eyes drop.
"I made that your punishment." I look at our hands, still separate between the chairs. "I gave Marisol the easy conversations. The ones that ended when the office door closed."
My throat tightens. "And I left you with the silence after."
Sera's fingers loosen.
For a moment, neither of us says anything.
Then she says, "I stopped waiting up."
The image comes immediately. The bedroom lamp, dark. I had walked into that room night after night without understanding what had changed.
"I know."
"No." She looks at me. "I don't think you did then."
"I didn't."
I hold her gaze.
"That's what scares me most when I think about it now."
Her brow furrows.
"I thought things were calmer because you had stopped asking." The shame of it sits heavily in my chest. "I didn't understand that you were getting quieter because you were giving up."
Sera looks down at her lap.
I don't reach for her. Not yet.
"I remember the story you never told me." She looks up. "Not the story itself."
A sad smile touches my mouth. "I still don't know what happened with the lavender paper."
Something flickers across her face.
"But I remember that there was a story, and you carried it home for me." I swallow. "And I wasn't there to hear it."
Her eyes shine. I let the silence stay.
There are some things I don't need to explain anymore.