Chapter 11
CLAIRE
In early February, Ethan asked if I would see him alone once before we signed the agreement.
I needed to collect my last things from the old house, so we agreed on Saturday afternoon. Nora would bake cookies at Mia’s while I went.
On the drive to the old house, I turned down the heat in the car.
Over those months, we’d found more to talk about than when we’d first separated.
Ethan would ask which book the group had chosen next, and I would tell him what Nora had called by the wrong name.
Once, he’d replied with an old joke, and I’d laughed in the kitchen for a long time, only realizing after I stopped that the water had boiled.
But I’d still replied to my lawyer as agreed and confirmed I was ready.
I parked in the familiar driveway and unlocked the door. The key hadn’t rusted or become harder to turn. It was just the small sound of metal against the lock that left me standing on the doorstep for a moment.
Ethan came out of the kitchen, his sleeves rolled to his elbows. Seeing the empty bag in my hand, he reached out, then lowered his hand.
“Your things are upstairs. Would you like to get them first?”
“Let’s sit for a while first.”
He nodded quickly, as if afraid I might take it back.
The kettle was on in the kitchen. He opened the cupboard and took out my light-colored mug, warming it with hot water before making the tea. That was my habit. In cold weather, I always complained that the cup cooled my tea. Only afterward did he look at me, his hand pausing on the kettle.
“Still weak?”
“Mm.”
I took off my coat and draped it over the chair I used to sit in. He turned the mug’s handle so it was easy for me to reach. I wrapped my hand around it, warmth spreading into my palm. I hadn’t lived here for months, but my knee still automatically avoided the protruding part of the table leg.
He sat beside me instead of all the way across the table. His hair was a little longer than the last time I’d seen him. Sunlight fell across the corner of his eye, showing the fine lines there. Before he’d said what he wanted to say, I already wanted to lay my hand against his face.
“The apartment—it’s been cold these past few days. Are you managing?—”
He stopped, lowered his head, and rubbed a palm over his mouth.
I waited. The kettle base made a small click.
“Claire, I don’t want a divorce. Could you give me a little more time?”
My hand tightened around the mug.
He looked at me and went on. “I’m asking you to stay. You don’t have to move back yet. I know you don’t want to. I just… I don’t want us to sign.”
On the way over, I’d thought about how to make myself clear if he brought up the property arrangements again, or said he was keeping the house for me.
I hadn’t prepared for these words. With nothing else between us, his voice was so close that I wanted to lean away a little, but couldn’t bear to move.
“Ethan—”
“Let me finish first, please? I’m not trying to argue.” He drew a breath. “I’m afraid I won’t be able to get the words out later.”
I nodded. He glanced at my hand, then clasped his own at the edge of the table.
“All these months, I kept thinking we still had a chance. Sometimes you’d talk to me a little longer, tell me things about the library. I know you didn’t promise anything, but I still thought maybe in another week, another month, when you saw I was really doing it this time, you’d…”
He left the rest unsaid and looked up, as though searching my face for something that would let him continue.
“I like telling you those things,” I said.
His eyes brightened at once. I had to go on. “But I haven’t changed my mind about the divorce.”
The light faded. He unclasped his hands and pressed his palms to his knees.
“I know. You’ve always been clear when you answered. I was the one imagining more.”
Steam rose from the mug and brushed my chin. I put it down, afraid to keep holding it in case my hand shook and spilled the water.
“I don’t just want us to stay married on paper,” he said.
“I want a life with you. To get up in the morning and find you in the kitchen, complaining that I’ve dripped coffee on the counter, asking what I want for dinner before we leave.
I want to ask where we’re going this weekend without first wondering whether I have the right to send that message. ”
He leaned forward a little in his urgency.
“I know. I was the one who didn’t answer you. I made you keep asking first. Sometimes you’d have everything planned and I’d still change the time. I’m not saying you’re treating me badly now. It’s just that every day I come home, I think about what you used to be doing.”
My eyes began to burn.
“One day, I was upstairs looking for my charging cable. I reached the bedroom door and was about to ask if you’d taken it over to the bed again.” He tried a short laugh that didn’t quite come out. “Then I remembered you weren’t here. The cable wasn’t even missing. It was in my own bag.”
I almost asked whether he’d finally cleaned out that bag. The answer would be no.
“I want to be able to touch you at night.” His voice dropped. “Not always to do anything. I want to put my hand on your waist and hear you say I’m too warm, then have you fall asleep and move closer anyway. Claire, you were always part of what I wanted. How did I let our life turn into…”
He swallowed and looked away from my face.
I wanted to tell him I remembered those nights too. Before I could, he spoke again, more urgently.
“After the divorce, if you don’t want to see me again, we’ll have nothing to talk about except Nora. On your birthday, I might not even know whether I can send you flowers. And later, if you find someone else?—”
He shook his head hard and fell silent for a long time.
“I can’t even bear to think about it. I know I can’t make demands, but I’m scared. You’ll tell someone else about your day and go home with him. I’ll become someone you used to know.”
As soon as my tears fell, he pulled two tissues from the box and held them out. The first clung to his fingertip, and he hurried to pull it free. I took them and wiped my face. A patch of the paper quickly grew wet.
“You won’t become that,” I said.
“Then can we stop before we go this far?”
His eyes were red too. He didn’t take comfort in what I’d said. He kept looking straight at me, waiting for an answer.
I looked down and folded the tissues. The wet part tore at my touch. Ethan reached out, palm up, and stopped beside my mug.
There was a small old scar near the base of his thumb.
I knew those hands, knew how he looked when he held a book in front of me and deliberately covered the ending.
In the old days, he would wait outside the library after work.
We’d pass a used-book stall, and he’d pick up a book and read the back cover in a solemn voice, as though the woman whose five husbands had died one after another were really waiting for us to investigate.
I’d laugh too hard to keep walking, and he’d stand at the curb and laugh with me until the seller began to glare.
Back then, when we reached the fork in the road, we always walked another block.
I moved my hand over, my fingertips touching his palm. He leaned forward at once and gently curled his fingers around mine. I almost tightened my grip. Just a little pressure, and he would hold on to me. Perhaps I could bury my face in his shoulder as I used to and not have to speak yet.
I wanted it so much my chest hurt.
A corner of his cuff was tucked under. I reached out with my other hand and smoothed it flat. He stayed still, looking down at my hand. I ran my fingers over the crease twice, still reluctant to let go.
“You’re still willing to touch me,” he said.
I lifted my head and saw hope rising in his eyes again. My throat tightened until it hurt.
“I never said I didn’t want to touch you.”
He moved closer. I could smell the familiar detergent on his shirt. His chair touched mine. Once, that much space would have been just enough for one of us to complain about being crowded and the other to move closer on purpose. That afternoon, I didn’t move. I didn’t smile either.
“I’ve thought about us growing old together too,” I said. “Not just before. Even after I moved out, sometimes I’d see a place and think we could stay there for a few days when we had time. I’d get halfway through the thought before I remembered.”
His thumb moved a little. His eyes stayed on mine.
“We can go.”
I shook my head. Tears fell onto our touching hands.
“Hear me out.”
He closed his eyes briefly and nodded. Slowly, I drew my hand away and pressed it to my trembling knee. His stayed where it was. He didn’t pull it back right away.
“I know what you’ve done these past few months. Nora’s happy with you, and I don’t have to keep checking my phone. Those people apologized to me afterward. I know you spoke to them. I’ve seen it.”
“Then why can’t?—”
He stopped, his jaw tight. Seeing the effort it took him made me feel worse.
“Because I don’t want to keep waiting to find out whether this time will be different.
” I wiped my face, my words breaking off several times.
“I really used to believe you when you said later. I didn’t just say I believed you, Ethan.
I cleared days. I put my own things off, thinking that once you got through this busy stretch, we could… ”
I couldn’t go on. I lowered my head and drew a breath. He pushed the tissue box closer. I took one but only held it.
“Now I’m in my own apartment. On Wednesdays, I can lead my group. I can say yes to things I want to do. I still miss you. Sometimes terribly. But I don’t wake up every day wondering whether I should ask you again today, whether you’ll think I’m asking too much.”
“I won’t,” he said quickly. Then his voice fell. “I know why you’d think that.”
“I don’t want to live like that again.”
He watched me with an urgency I could barely bear. If I gave way, we would both cling to it. I couldn’t send us back into another wait.
“I still love you,” I said.
His lips moved. Before he could speak, I finished.
“But I want a divorce.”
The kitchen fell silent. Somewhere upstairs, a draft moved a door, and it tapped the wall. Ethan glanced toward the stairs, as if suddenly there were something he could go and do, but he didn’t get up.
I was a mess from crying, with my nose blocked and the tissues crushed into a ball. His tears ran down beside his nose. He wiped them away and stayed in his chair. I’d never seen him like this. He wasn’t squeezing an apology into a busy day or rushing to find a way to make us both feel better.
After a long time, he asked quietly, “Is there really no way we can try again?”
I shook my head.
“Even if we keep living apart, just don’t…”
I looked at him and shook my head again. He swallowed the rest. The corners of his mouth pulled down, and his fingers tightened on the table edge until his knuckles turned white.
“All right,” he said.
It was so quiet, barely breath forced through his throat. After a while, he let go of the table and stood with his back to me. The water in the kettle was still warm. He switched it on, then off again.
I didn’t go to hold him. I was afraid that if I touched him, I would promise something I couldn’t agree to, just to make this moment hurt us less.
I drank a few more sips of tea without tasting it.
Later, I went upstairs and packed my old travel notes, the two books from beside the bed, and the scarf I’d forgotten at the back of the closet.
He waited by the door and asked if I’d found everything.
I glanced at the other side of the bed and nodded.
He followed me downstairs, reaching once to support the bottom of the bag without snatching it from my hand. In the kitchen, I stopped, poured the remaining tea out of the light-colored mug, washed it, and dried it with a towel.
There was a tea stain on the inside of the handle that wouldn’t wash off. I rubbed it again. It stayed.
“I’m taking this too.”
Ethan nodded. I pulled the scarf from my bag, wrapped it around the mug, and set it on top. He watched without offering to buy me another one.
I put on my coat and took the key to the old house off my key ring. The little ring was stiff. I tried twice to pry it apart with my nail, then stopped because it hurt. His hand moved toward me. In the end, he only opened his palm and waited.
The moment the key fell into his hand, his fingers closed around it.
“I’m going.”
His eyes red, he didn’t answer. I walked to the door and looked back. He managed a slight nod, the hand holding the key hanging at his side.
Outside, I sat in my car for a long time, only starting it when a delivery van needed to get past behind me. No call came after me. I drove through the first intersection and remembered I hadn’t told him the kitchen window wasn’t properly shut. Slowly, I swallowed the words.
A few weeks later, our divorce became final. The arrangements for our property and Nora’s care were all in place too.
When the confirmation arrived, I was eating lunch in the little break room at the back of the library. I read the message and wrapped up the remaining half of my sandwich. My colleague asked if I needed to leave early. I said I wanted some air and would be back in a little while.
I walked around the block, the wind chilling my tears.
Back in the library, a reader couldn’t find a book she’d seen the day before.
I went to the shelves with her and finally pulled it out of a row where it had been misplaced.
When she thanked me, I could answer normally, though my voice was a little hoarse.
That evening, Ethan confirmed he’d picked up Nora and brought her drawing. He kept the arrangements without asking me to reconsider.
At the apartment, I cooked noodles, washed my bowl, and laid out my work clothes for the next day. Only when I passed the window and saw the mug I’d brought back did I touch the ring finger of my left hand.
The ring still rested against my skin. I turned it halfway around and slowly took it off. A faint mark remained at the base of my finger. I rubbed it with my thumb for a while, then suddenly remembered Ethan’s open hand that afternoon. Tears spilled onto my pajamas.
I sat on the edge of the bed and cried until my chest hurt. Then I found a small box, put the ring inside, and placed it in my bedside drawer.
I was still sobbing when the drawer closed. My phone lay beside the pillow. I didn’t pick it up to change my answer.