2. Friday
Two
Friday
Sebastian came home late on Friday, which wasn’t unusual, except that he’d texted ahead to say he wanted to talk, which was.
I was in the kitchen when he came in, still in his suit, tie loosened, and I remember thinking he looked tired in a way that had nothing to do with sleep. I’d been married to him long enough to know the difference between a man who needed rest and a man who was bracing for something.
“You wanted to talk,” I said.
He didn’t sit down. That should have told me something before he opened his mouth.
“I’ve been trying to figure out how to say this for days,” he said. “And I don’t think there’s a good way, so I’m just going to say it.”
I set down the knife I’d been using to cut lemons for water no one was going to drink. My hands wanted something to hold.
“I think we should separate,” Sebastian said. “I think — I need to ask you for a divorce.”
The room did something strange. It didn’t spin. It went very still, the way things do right before an accident, when everything slows down enough that you can see each individual piece of what’s about to break.
“Because of Vanessa,” I said. Not a question.
His jaw tightened. “It’s not — I haven’t done anything, Claire. I haven’t touched her. I want you to know that. I would never—”
“That’s not what I asked.”
He was quiet for a moment. Sebastian was a man who negotiated for a living, who could hold silence like a weapon, but this silence looked different on him. It looked like a man who didn’t have an answer and hated that he didn’t.
“I don’t know what I feel anymore,” he said finally.
Four words. Not I don’t love you. Not I love someone else. Just enough uncertainty to end nine years.
I want to tell you I said something devastating.
Something that would have made him understand, in that moment, exactly what he was doing.
But I didn’t. I stood in our kitchen holding a lemon half in one hand, and something in my chest went very quiet, the way a house goes quiet after the power cuts — not silent, exactly.
Just suddenly, completely without its usual hum.
“Okay,” I said.
He blinked. “Okay?”
“You don’t know what you feel.” I set the lemon down carefully, like it mattered, like anything about that counter mattered.
“I’m not going to spend the next year convincing you to feel something you have to be talked into.
I did that once, a long time ago, with someone else. I’m not doing it again.”
“Claire—”
“I heard you, Sebastian.” My voice came out steadier than I expected. Steadier than I felt. “You don’t know. That’s an answer. It’s just not the one you think it is.”
He reached for me, and I stepped back — not dramatically, just enough. Enough that his hand found air instead of my arm.
“I’ll call someone tomorrow,” I said. “About the apartment. You should probably stay here tonight. I’ll go to Lucy’s.”
“You don’t have to leave tonight—”
“I know I don’t have to.” I was already reaching for my bag, my keys, moving through the motions of a plan I hadn’t known I had until I was making it. “I want to.”
I made it to the elevator before anything in my face changed.
I made it to the lobby, past the doorman who’d known me for six years and said goodnight like it was any other night, before my hands started shaking.
I made it into a cab, gave Lucy’s address, and put my forehead against the cool glass of the window, and somewhere around Fifty-Ninth Street, I let myself understand what had actually happened.
My husband didn’t know what he felt.
And I had just found out I knew exactly what I felt about that.