11. Erika
— ? —
Erika
The suitcase is packed when he gets home.
I’ve been sitting in the foyer for hours, my bags arranged at my feet like soldiers awaiting orders, watching the shadows shift across the walls as the light changes and fades and disappears entirely.
The house has gone dark around me, and I haven’t bothered to turn on any lights, because the darkness feels appropriate, feels like everything that’s been building between us for months made visible.
The large suitcase holds my clothes, everything I could grab quickly without thinking too hard about what I was leaving behind, jeans and sweaters and the comfortable things I actually like wearing, not the designer pieces he bought me for galas and all the occasions where I was supposed to be decorative.
The laptop bag has my computer and my notebooks, all those stolen hours of writing that belong to me and no one else.
The small rolling case has the trophy from the ceremony, wrapped carefully in a sweater so it won’t break, because that trophy is proof that I did a thing that mattered, that I exist outside of this marriage, that I’m more than someone’s wife.
I left the diamonds, the bracelet he bought me after he missed the ceremony still in its velvet box, the necklace from our anniversary and the earrings from my birthday and all the other expensive apologies he’s given me over the years, all the glittering evidence of his guilt.
I left the designer clothes that were really costumes for events I didn’t want to attend, the silk dresses and the structured blazers and the heels that were slowly ruining my feet.
I left the robe I wore on our wedding night, faded now and worn thin from years of use, because that robe belongs to a woman who doesn’t exist anymore.
I left everything that was his version of me, and I kept everything that was mine.
The marble floor is cold beneath my feet. I kicked off my shoes hours ago, because I couldn’t stand the feeling of being dressed up anymore, of performing even for an empty house, and now I’m sitting on the bench by the door in jeans and a sweater, my bare toes curled against the stone, waiting.
Part of me hoped he wouldn’t come home, that he’d stay at a hotel or go to Dora’s or drive around the city all night rather than walk through that door and make me say the words out loud.
But I know Kai, better than he knows himself sometimes, and I know that right now he’s panicking in that particular way he does when a thing he thought was stable turns out to be crumbling.
He’s been looking for me. I can picture it clearly, Kai driving to every place we’ve ever been together, calling everyone whose number he has, leaving increasingly desperate voicemails on the phone I’ve been ignoring, racing around the city trying to find the wife who was sitting in her own house the whole time, waiting for him to come home.
The irony isn’t lost on me. He finally goes looking for me the day I stop looking for him.
My phone lights up on the bench beside me every few minutes, his name and then his name and then his name, and I watch it glow and go dark without picking it up.
Eleven missed calls by nine o’clock. Four voicemails I don’t play.
Somewhere around ten I turn it face down on the marble, the way he’s turned his phone face down at a hundred dinner tables while telling me tonight was mine, and I sit with that for a while, the small ugly satisfaction of it, and it doesn’t make me feel any better at all.
I hear his car in the driveway just after eleven, the engine cutting, a door slamming hard enough that I can hear it from inside, footsteps on the front walk hurried and uneven, almost running, then his key in the lock, the familiar scrape and click, and the door swings open.
Kai freezes on the threshold, backlit by the porch light, and I watch his face as he takes in the scene, the suitcase and the bags and me sitting in the darkness with my hands folded in my lap like I’m waiting for an execution.
“Erika.” His face goes white. “What is this? I’ve been looking everywhere for you. I went to the beach, I drove past Dora’s three times, I called everyone I could think of. Where did you go?”
I almost laugh at that. He’s been all over the city and I’ve been on this bench the whole time, and it’s the most he’s looked for me in a year.
He didn’t think to check here. He never thinks to check here, because here is where I always am, and things that are always there don’t need looking for, right up until they’re gone.
“I want a divorce.”
The words come out flat and final, and the quiet after them is total.
I’ve been rehearsing them in my head for hours, trying to find the right way to say them, and in the end there is no right way, there are just the words themselves, plain and brutal.
I watch them land, watch the color drain from his face like water from a sink, watch his mouth open and close, struggling to form a response.
“What?”
“I want a divorce, Kai.” I don’t recognize my own voice, calm in a way I don’t feel, like all the emotion has been burned out of me and all that’s left is ash. “I’m done.”
“You can’t just…” He steps toward me, hands reaching out like he’s trying to catch a thing that’s already fallen. “We had a fight. Couples fight. That doesn’t mean we throw away four years of…”
“This isn’t about a fight.”
“Then what?” He’s closer now, close enough that I can see the red rims of his eyes and the way his hair is standing up like he’s been raking his hands through it for hours. “Tell me what this is about, because I’ve been going out of my mind trying to understand what’s happening.”
“I heard you.”
He stops moving. “What?”
“At Dora’s.” I force myself to meet his eyes, to say the words clearly and without flinching even though every syllable feels like swallowing glass. “In the kitchen. I was setting the table in the garden and the window was open and I heard every word you said.”
The confusion on his face shifts to recognition, then dawning horror.
“Erika, whatever you heard, I didn’t mean…”
“‘The spark is missing.’” I quote his words back to him, each one a small blade. “‘I don’t know if I still feel the same way about her.’” I pause, letting them land, watching the guilt spread across his features like a stain. “Do you deny saying it?”
“Dora was asking me questions and I was frustrated and exhausted, I hadn’t slept in days, I was just talking, I didn’t mean…”
“Do you deny it?”
His mouth opens and closes, and I can see him searching for the right words, the magic combination that will make this all go away.
“Tell me you didn’t mean it.” My voice breaks despite my best efforts to keep it steady. “Look me in the eye and tell me you still love me the way you used to. Tell me I misheard.”
He tries. I can see him trying, watch him open his mouth to say the words that might save us, that might give me some tiny thread of hope to cling to, and his jaw works and his eyes are wet and nothing comes out.
“That’s what I thought.”
The worst part is that I wanted him to lie.
Standing there with my bags packed and my mind made up, I still wanted him to look at me and say it wasn’t true, and I would have known it was a lie, and I think I would have let him tell it.
That’s how far gone I am. That’s how much of myself I’ve traded away, one small silence at a time.
“Erika, please.” His voice cracks on my name. “I was confused. I’ve been so caught up in work, so stressed about everything, I haven’t been thinking clearly for months…”
“You’ve been thinking clearly enough to choose work over me every single day for a year.” The bitterness in my voice surprises me, rising up from somewhere deep and dark that I didn’t know existed.
“I know I’ve been absent…”
“You haven’t been absent, Kai. That’s the thing.
” I stand up from the bench, and he takes a step back like he’s afraid of me, like I’m dangerous.
“You’ve been present, just not for me. You’ve been present for the company and the deals and the legacy you’re building. I’m the one you’ve been absent from.”
“I was trying to build a life for us…”
“You were trying to build it for yourself. For your father. For everyone except me.” I take a breath, and the words I’ve been holding back for years start spilling out, unstoppable now.
“You know what I realized, sitting in that garden listening to you? I realized I’ve spent four years making myself smaller and quieter and less demanding, so afraid of being a burden, so determined to be the perfect supportive wife, that I forgot I was supposed to be a person too. ”
“You’re not a burden…”
“You don’t see me, Kai. You never have.” The tears are coming now, hot and fast, and I don’t bother trying to stop them.
“You see someone who handles things, who manages your schedule and runs your household and shows up at your events and never complains. But that’s not a wife. That’s an assistant.”
“That’s not true…”
“I quit.”
He blinks, thrown completely off balance. “What?”
“My job.” The laugh that escapes me is hollow. “I quit. Effective immediately. Find another assistant to manage your calendar. Find another wife to stand beside you at parties. I’m done putting my life on hold for the sake of yours.”
“Erika, you can’t…”
“The papers will be filed Monday.”
I grab my suitcase and pull it toward the door, and the wheels make a small sound against the marble that’s the loudest thing in the room.
“We can work this out.” He’s following me, his voice getting more desperate with each word. “Whatever you need, whatever it takes, I’ll do it, just tell me and I’ll…”
“It’s too late.”
“Please.” His hand catches my arm, and I stop but I don’t turn around, because if I look at him I might waver, might let myself be talked out of this the way I’ve let myself be talked out of so many things. “Please don’t do this. I love you.”
“Then you should have acted like it.”
I pull my arm free, and his fingers stay open in the air where my arm was for a second, like he doesn’t know what to do with a hand that isn’t holding onto me. I open the door, and the night air is cool against my tear-streaked face, a relief after the suffocating weight of everything inside.
“Erika.”
I stop on the threshold with my back to him.
“Please.” It’s hardly a voice at all. “Don’t go.”
I stand there for a moment, feeling the weight of everything we’ve built and everything we’ve lost. Behind me is the marriage, the trying, the hoping things would get better.
Ahead of me is darkness and uncertainty and the terrifying freedom of starting over, and I’ve never once in my life chosen the terrifying thing over the safe one, and I’m about to.
I step forward.
“Goodbye, Kai.”
The door closes behind me, and the night swallows me whole.