7. Delphine
— ? —
Delphine
Blair pushed through the front doors of the Bellcliff Club, her hand firm on my arm, pulling me toward the car waiting at the curb.
The cold December air hit my face, sharp and bracing, but I barely felt it.
I was numb. Hollowed out. Everything that had happened in the ballroom felt distant and unreal.
“Del, stop! Please!”
Heath’s voice was closer now. He had followed us out, was running across the parking lot, his dress shoes slapping against the pavement. I heard his breathing, harsh and ragged, heard the desperation in his voice as he called my name again.
His hand closed around my arm.
I spun to face him, and the numbness cracked open into a rage, hot and terrible.
“Don’t touch me.”
He dropped his hand immediately, his face stricken. “Del, please. Just talk to me. Tell me what’s happening. Tell me what I missed.”
“What you missed?” I laughed, a sound so bitter it hurt my own ears. “You want to know what you missed, Heath? You missed three months. Three months of our marriage. Three months of me trying to reach you while you disappeared into work and silence and whatever the hell else you’ve been doing.”
“I know I’ve been distant. I know things have been hard. But that woman in there, the one you just punched, I don’t understand what happened. I don’t understand any of this.”
“Her name is Kendall.” My voice was rising now, sharp and loud in the quiet parking lot. “Your first love. The woman your mother has been comparing me to for nine years. The woman who’s been living in our house for weeks, touching you, whispering with you, making plans for your future together.”
“What?” Heath’s brow furrowed in genuine confusion. “What plans? Delphine, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I found the text message.” The words ripped out of me, raw and ragged.
“I found it on your phone. ‘I can’t wait to go to Europe with you. It will be amazing. We’re going to build something great there, us together.
’ That was from Kendall. From the woman who just called our...
who just mocked me in front of everyone we know. ”
Heath’s face went pale. “Del. That’s not what you think it is.”
“Then tell me what it is. Right now, in one sentence, tell me what it is.” I waited.
He said nothing. “Because I’ve been trying to understand for months.
I’ve been lying awake at night, wondering what happened to my husband, wondering where you went, and now I know.
You’ve been with her. Planning your escape. Leaving me behind.”
“I haven’t been with her.” His voice cracked on the words. “God, Del, I haven’t touched another woman since I was eighteen years old. You’re my wife. You’re my whole life.”
“Then explain it to me.” I stepped closer to him, my chin lifted, my eyes burning with tears I refused to let fall.
“Explain the distance. Explain the silence. Explain why Kendall knows things about our future that I don’t.
Explain why your mother told me today that you’ve been having an affair, that you’re planning to leave me, that I was never supposed to be part of this family. ”
“My mother said that?” Heath’s expression shifted, anger flickering dark across his features. “My mother told you I was cheating?”
“She said you and Kendall have been together for months. She said you’re moving to Europe with her. She said I should pack my bags and get out before you work up the courage to tell me yourself.”
“That’s a lie.” Heath’s voice was fierce now, certain. “Del, I swear to you, that’s a lie. I’ve never been unfaithful. I’ve never wanted anyone but you. Whatever my mother told you, it’s not true.”
I wanted to believe him. God, I wanted to believe him so badly that my chest ached with it. But I had been watching him for months now, watching him slip away from me piece by piece, and his denial was not enough.
“Then tell me the truth.” I crossed my arms over my chest, holding myself together.
“Tell me what’s really going on. Tell me why you’ve been a stranger since September.
Tell me why you and Kendall are texting about Europe.
Tell me one thing that makes sense, Heath, because right now I don’t know what to believe anymore. ”
He opened his mouth. Closed it. His eyes were anguished, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides.
“It’s nothing,” he said finally. “It’s work.”
I waited. I stood there in the cold with my heart in my throat and gave him the whole world, and he stood there and gave me two words.
“Work,” I repeated.
“Del, please. Can we just go home?”
I want to describe what I did next accurately, because for a long time afterward I told myself that I walked away from my husband in a parking lot.
I didn’t. He had just handed me two words, and I stood there in the cold in a borrowed dress with blood drying on my knuckles and I gave him two more chances at it anyway. Two. After all of it. I want that on the record for as long as there’s a record.
The first time I dug like a wife.
“Okay,” I said. “Okay. Work. Then tell me about work.” I made my voice soft.
God help me, I made it soft. “Heath, I have a degree in this. I sat in the same lectures you did. Whatever it is, whatever has gone wrong at that firm, there’s not one person on this earth better equipped to sit up all night with you and fix it and you married her.
” My throat closed. “You used to bring me things. Do you remember? You used to come home and put a problem on the table between us like a dead bird the cat brought in and we would take it apart together until three in the morning and I was so happy. I was so happy, Heath.”
His face moved. For about a second and a half his face moved and I saw the whole rest of my life in it.
“It’s not that kind of problem,” he said.
And the second and a half closed, and he was gone again, and I felt a year come off the marriage the way plaster comes off a wall. Not dramatically. Just a sheet of it, gone, and the cold underneath.
The second time I dug like a woman with nothing left.
“Then lie to me.” My voice cracked straight down the center of it.
“I mean that. I’m not being clever. Invent a story.
Tell me it’s money, tell me it’s a lawsuit, tell me you’re dying, Heath, I’m standing here begging my husband for a lie because a lie is a thing you hand to someone and I haven’t been handed anything since September. ”
He said my name. Just my name.
“Anything,” I said. “One sentence. Any sentence. I’ll take a bad one.”
And my husband, who’s the most articulate man I’ve ever known, who talks contractors out of strikes and sits on three boards and once explained load transfer to a room of investors so beautifully that a woman cried, opened his mouth and closed it and said nothing at all.
That was the second year off the wall.
That was the one that took the wall.
He shook his head. Whatever was behind his eyes, he took it back inside with him and shut the door on it, the same way he had been doing since September.
“That’s not an answer.” My voice was not soft anymore.
It had gone somewhere cold and level and I could hear it happening from outside my own body.
“That’s the same nothing you’ve been handing me since September, and I have now asked you for it twice in a parking lot with a bleeding hand, and I’m not asking a third time.
Do you understand? There’s no third time.
You’ve had three months to talk to me, Heath.
Three months of opportunities to explain whatever is going on.
Instead you shut me out. You let your mother and your ex move into our house.
You let me twist in the wind while everyone around me told me our marriage was over. ”
“I didn’t know what they were saying to you. I didn’t know my mother was...”
“You should have known!” The words exploded out of me, all the pain and rage and grief I had been holding back for months finally breaking free.
“You should have been paying attention! You should have been there, Heath, but you weren’t.
You haven’t been there in so long that I’ve forgotten what it feels like to have a husband who actually sees me. ”
He flinched as if I had struck him.
“I know I’ve failed you,” he said quietly. “I know I’ve made a mess of everything. But I love you, Del. I’ve always loved you. That’s never changed, not for one second.”
“Then why does it feel like you’ve already left?”
The question hung between us, heavy and unanswerable. Heath stared at me, his eyes shining with what might have been tears, his mouth working around words that wouldn’t come.
I waited. I gave him one more chance to save us, one more opportunity to explain the unexplainable, to offer me one real, true thing that I could hold onto.
He said nothing.
The silence stretched on, filled with the distant sound of music from the party and the cold whisper of wind through the bare trees.
“I want a divorce.”
The words came out calm and clear. I hadn’t known I was going to say them until they were already out, already floating in the frozen air between us.
Heath’s face went white. “What?”
“I can’t do this anymore.” My voice was steady, steadier than I had expected. “I can’t keep waiting for you to come back to me. I can’t keep wondering what’s true and what’s a lie. I can’t keep fighting for a marriage that only one of us seems to want.”
“Del, please.” He reached for me, his hand trembling. “Please don’t do this. I know I’ve made mistakes, but we can fix this. We can work through it. Just give me a chance to explain.”
I stepped back, out of his reach. “You’ve had chances. Months of chances. And every time I tried to reach you, you pulled away. Every time I asked what was wrong, you said nothing. I’m done asking, Heath. I’m done begging you to let me into your own life.”
“You’re upset. You’re not thinking clearly. Please, let’s just go home and...”
“I’m not going home.” I turned toward Blair’s car, where she was waiting by the open driver’s door. “I’m going to stay with Blair tonight. And tomorrow I’m going to call a lawyer and start the paperwork.”
“Delphine.”
I stopped walking but didn’t turn around.
“I love you.” His voice was breaking now, cracking apart on the words. “I know I haven’t shown it. I know I’ve been a terrible husband. But I love you more than anything in this world, and I can’t lose you. Please. Please don’t do this.”
For one terrible moment, I almost turned back. I almost ran to him, almost let him hold me, almost believed that love was enough to fix what was broken between us.
But love without trust was nothing. Love without honesty was a prison. And I had been trapped in that prison for too long.
“Goodbye, Heath.”
I walked to the car and got in. Blair was already behind the wheel, the engine running, the heater blowing warm air across my frozen skin.
“Are you sure?” she asked quietly.
I nodded. I couldn’t speak anymore. Everything I had was focused on not falling apart.
Blair put the car in drive and pulled away from the curb.
In the rearview mirror, I saw Heath standing alone in the parking lot, his arms hanging at his sides, his face twisted with what looked like grief. He started to run after the car, his mouth forming my name, his hand outstretched.
But we were already gone.
I watched him shrink in the mirror, growing smaller and smaller, until we turned a corner and he disappeared entirely.
Then I put my face in my hands and cried.