Chapter 77
The Reply Not Yet Sent
They lasted six hours.
Nathan was proud of that in a pathetic way.
Six hours of grocery shopping, laundry folding, an argument with the internet provider, one walk around the neighborhood, and thirty-two separate glances at the half-closed laptop on the kitchen table.
The draft waited inside it with the patience of a tide.
Nothing about it moved. Everything about it pulled.
At 5:08 p.m., Marissa stood in the doorway of Nathan's office.
"I think we should read it again."
He turned from the spreadsheet he had not been editing. "The email?"
"No, the internet provider's terms of service. Yes, the email."
He smiled. "You are nervous."
"Very. Do not enjoy it."
"I would never."
"You are visibly enjoying it."
He followed her to the kitchen.
The late afternoon sun had shifted across the table, leaving the captain's card in a rectangle of gold. ANCHOR showed through faintly from the back where the ink had pressed into the paper. Nathan touched the edge of the card before opening the laptop.
The draft looked different now.
Less shocking. More inevitable.
They read it together without speaking.
"It is respectful," Marissa said.
"It is cautious."
"It is us trying to sound like adults."
"Are we?"
She considered. "Intermittently."
Nathan placed the cursor at the end of the message.
"Do we add anything?" he asked.
Marissa pulled out a chair and sat. "Maybe a boundary before the boundary conversation."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning I do not want him to think we are asking him to decide for us."
Nathan understood immediately.
He added:
We are not asking you to lead us past our own decisions. We are asking what another charter would involve so we can decide clearly.
Marissa read it twice.
"Good."
Nathan's finger hovered near the trackpad.
The send button waited in the corner of the screen, blue and ordinary and impossibly powerful.
"Your truth first," Marissa said.
He should have expected it. He loved that he had not.
Nathan looked at the card. "If we send this, part of me will feel like I have failed as a husband."
Marissa closed her eyes.
"And another part?"
"Another part will feel like I have finally stopped making husband mean jailer."
She reached for his hand.
He let her take it.
"My truth," she said. "If we send this, part of me will be afraid you are only doing it to keep me from resenting you."
"And another part?"
Her eyes opened. "Another part will feel like you are choosing to stand with me while I tell the truth about wanting more life inside my life."
Nathan absorbed that. More life inside my life. It was not about Dane only. It had never been about Dane only, which somehow made Dane more dangerous, not less. He had become the name attached to a door they had both pretended not to see.
"Do we send it?" he asked.
Marissa squeezed his hand. "Together."
He moved the laptop so it sat exactly between them.
One finger from each of them touched the trackpad.
They looked absurd.
They knew it.
Neither laughed.
The cursor moved to Send.
Nathan felt his pulse in his wrist, in his throat, in the place where jealousy and desire had become difficult to separate. Marissa's finger pressed beside his.
The message vanished.
For a moment, the sent screen looked blank.
Then the confirmation appeared.
Message sent.
Marissa exhaled as if she had been underwater.
Nathan sat back.
Nothing happened.
No thunder. No immediate reply. No moral authority arrived to declare them ruined or liberated. The house remained the house. The card remained on the table. The laptop fan whispered softly.
"Now what?" Marissa asked.
Nathan closed the laptop.
"Now we do not hover over the inbox like teenagers."
Five seconds passed.
Marissa said, "We are going to hover."
"Absolutely."
They laughed, and the laughter broke the spell without undoing the decision.
That evening they cooked dinner together. Too much garlic. Not enough salt. A bottle of wine opened but barely touched because both of them kept remembering Dane's first requirement: sober enough to know what they meant.
At 8:46 p.m., the joint account chimed.
They froze at opposite sides of the kitchen.
Nathan looked at Marissa.
Marissa looked at Nathan.
Neither moved.
The laptop sat closed on the table, holding whatever had returned from the harbor.