Chapter 3
Noah
I sit on my bed. Our bed.
I look at her side of the mattress, imagining her lying on it.
The slight indent in the fabric has almost filled back in...
I still picture her there. She used to lie on her stomach, phone propped against the pillow, laughing at something she saw on her screen.
It was a quiet laugh, a soft huff of sound she did when she didn't want to wake the children.
A smile starts somewhere behind my ribs. It does not finish.
I bow my head into my palms.
When did it go wrong?
The same question waits for me every night, sitting on the edge of this mattress like it lives here now.
A flicker of anger stirs beneath it... directed inward...
because the answer should be obvious. The reason she left should be clear to me by now.
The fact that it isn't sits in my gut like something I cannot digest.
Is it my absence?
I already know the truth. I just cannot bring myself to say the words out loud.
I wipe my feet on the rug the way she taught me... years of her voice acting as a quiet guide in my head, small instructions I absorbed without noticing. I get under the covers, resting my back against the headboard, and pull up her name on my phone.
My thumb hovers over the screen. I do not call.
Pride lives somewhere under my skin, ugly and pointless, locking my fingers every time I get close.
Underneath the pride is shame... shame at how blindsided I was the morning she slid those papers across the granite counter, and a different, deeper shame that the reason has been in front of me the whole time and I still cannot name it cleanly.
Both truths exist together, and neither one helps me.
I set the phone face down.
I could pray. The thought arrives sheepishly, knowing it has been a long time since I looked up. I let out a short breath... not quite a laugh.
"Oh God," I say to the empty room. My voice cracks on the first word, the sound thin and unfamiliar in the dark.
I swallow hard, clearing the tightness in my throat before I continue.
"She kept me grounded. For fifteen years she was the anchor that kept my feet on the floor, and I did not know it until she was gone and I started floating. "
I look at the dark ceiling, the silence pressing down on my chest.
"I do not even know where to begin walking this road without her. God, I love her. I just forgot what loving someone actually requires."
My father comes to mind.
My father's name was Samuel. Samuel would work long days...
the kind that left oil stains on his canvas clothes and grease under his fingernails that never fully washed out.
But every evening, no matter how tired he was, he would come through the front door and find my mother first. He would cross whatever room she was in and kiss her until she was laughing and unsteady on her feet.
Then he would reach into his pocket, set whatever coins he had on the kitchen counter, and repeat the ritual: This is all I have, my queen.
And she would hug him, oil stains and all.
He would turn to my brothers and me with a look on his face as if he were letting us in on the most important secret in the world. You see that, boys? Nothing completes me more than that smile.
He meant it every time.
I sit with the memory. Then I try to find the equivalent moment with Lily. I reach for it... and find blank space where those moments should be. I cannot conjure a single night we stayed up just to talk in the last few years. I cannot remember the last time I crossed a room to find her first.
I get up and go to the bathroom.
The Post-it note remains on the mirror frame. We wrote it together after Nora was born... both of us exhausted and sentimental, making lists in the small hours while the baby slept. I look at mine first. Everything is ticked, every item crossed off with the same ink.
I look at hers. Not one line is touched.
I close my eyes.
If my father were alive, he would not be gentle with me right now. I know exactly what he would say, and I know exactly the tone he would use. I stand on the cold tile with my eyes shut and let myself hear his voice.
I slide down the wall until I am sitting on the floor.
"What do I do?" I ask the room.
The room does not answer.
A memory surfaces without permission. I came home from work...
late, again... and found her in the doorway of our bedroom.
She was wearing the dark silk lingerie. She was smiling.
She curled one finger toward me, slow, the way she used to when we were younger.
I stood there in my wool suit and my exhaustion, and I heard myself say: "Aren't we too old for this? "
The sound that comes out of my throat now is low, a ragged breath. I drop my forehead to my knees.
I was tired. That is the truth. But there is no version of tired that makes that the right thing to say to your wife. There is no version of that story where I am not the villain.
Who was I to her? Who was I actually being all those years?
Dana's voice comes back to me: "You need to see a therapist."
***
It is Saturday when I drive over to see Clinton.
He is Dana's husband, and I know a little of what they went through... enough to know he made it to the other side, and that counts for something right now. I find him in his home office, papers spread across the desk, reading glasses low on his nose.
"Noah," Clint says, looking up from his laptop. He slides his glasses off and motions toward the leather chair across from him. "Grab a seat. Dana told me she had to give you another pep talk before you went on air this week. What’s going on? You look incredibly uptight."
I let out a dry chuckle, rubbing the back of my neck as I sit down. "Is it that obvious?"
"To anyone who knows you, yeah," Clint says, leaning back. "You're wearing the stress like a second suit."
I look down at my hands, tracing the seam of my jeans before meeting his eyes. "How do you give time to your wife and still do all this?"
Clint sets the papers down completely, his posture shifting. The casual tone vanishes, replaced by the full attention men give when they recognize a question that isn't really about work. "I told you we had a rough patch," he says softly.
"Yeah."
"She almost married someone else."
My jaw tightens, my back teeth pressing together before I can stop the reaction. The thought of Lily... of another man... of the space I left wide open for someone else to walk into makes my stomach turn.
Clinton watches my face. "That's exactly how I looked," he says.
"Like every wrong thing I'd ever done showed up at once.
Like the love I felt at the beginning knocked the breath clean out of me because I'd almost lost it.
" He rests his elbows on the desk. "I couldn't believe I'd sidelined her.
I couldn't believe I'd chosen the work, every time, without even noticing. "
He pauses, looking out the window before meeting my eyes again.
"So I stopped letting things just happen.
Now, no matter how tired I am, I come home and I find her first. I give her a kiss...
a real one, not a greeting. We laugh. I get into bed and I tell her about my day.
When she talks, I listen. Actually listen. "
"What if you're exhausted?" I ask.
"Then I tell her. But I tell her in a way that doesn't make her feel like a burden. A kiss doesn't put you in the ground, Noah. Going to bed with her in your arms doesn't cost what you think it costs. It's become the thing I look forward to most."
I sit with his words, the quiet of the office settling around us.
"Clint," I say, my voice dropping. "I haven't spoken to her in over a year.
" I pause, swallowing the dryness in my throat.
"Every day feels like something is being slowly pulled out of me.
I wake up and the first thing I feel is dread...
because I have to get through another day knowing she's not really here. "
He nods, the lines around his eyes deepening as if he knows exactly what that sentence weighs.
"There's a group of us," Clint says, picking up his phone and gesturing to the screen.
"An international WhatsApp group. Men from all over the world who have been exactly where you are right now.
We meet virtually, we share what's working, and we call each other out when we slip up.
" He reaches for his desk drawer. "But briefly...
there's a therapist I want you to see first."
I look at him.
"I know how that sounds," Clint says.
"It doesn't sound like anything," I say, resting my hands on my knees. "At this point, I'll try anything."
He taps the screen, his thumb moving quickly over the glass. "I'll get you in this evening."