5. Delia
DELIA
One last time.
I said it to myself while I was getting dressed Monday morning, and I meant it. One more try. After that I’d know.
I didn’t put on the gala dress or the heels or anything that looked like I was trying to fit into his world. I wore rink clothes. Jeans, a sweater, the warm coat I kept in my office, boots that were good on ice. Because the plan wasn’t to dress up for his life. The plan was to take my life to him.
I was going to ask him to come and stand on the ice with me. One hour. That was all.
I looked like myself for the first time in weeks, and it felt right.
The morning session ran long. A high school team had booked the full two hours and I let them stay an extra twenty minutes because their coach was working on something and the kids were listening. I didn’t charge for it.
When they cleared I went to my office and pulled the bag out from under my desk.
Both pairs were inside. My own skates, seven years old, edges sharp from Friday. And the men’s pair, still unworn, the tissue still tucked into the toes where the shop had left it.
I took them both out and set them on the desk.
The smell of the sharpening shop was still on mine, that clean steel scent, and the leather on his was stiff and new.
I checked the edges on mine with my thumb.
Perfect. Then I laced both pairs the way you lace skates you care about, slow and even, pulled snug at the ankle, the loops neat.
I packed them into two bags, one for each hand.
The weight was different with two. Heavier. More like I was carrying something that mattered.
Walt was in the mechanical room when I came through with both bags. He looked at me, then at the bags, and I saw his eyes catch on the second one. He didn’t ask. He just reached over and held the door for me while I passed through, and nodded once.
He knew exactly what I was doing. I could see it in his face. And he didn’t say a word.
I put the bags in the car and drove downtown.
The Falkner building was thirty floors of glass and engineered air, and the lobby cost more than my whole rink. I walked through it in my coat and boots, carrying two skate bags, and people looked at me.
I didn’t care.
The man at the desk saw me coming and smiled. He waved me through without making me sign in or show ID. He knew who I was. He’d seen me before.
“Good to see you, Mrs. Falkner,” he said.
I smiled back and kept walking, but the kindness made it worse. Being welcomed here, being known, and still walking in like I had to ask permission for an hour of my own husband’s time.
I took the elevator up.
I stood outside his office door with both bags in my hands and I was happier than I’d been in months.
This was going to work. It had to. I was going to knock, and he was going to open the door, and I was going to hand him the bag with his skates in it and tell him I wanted to teach him. One hour on the ice. No phones, no Corinne, no deal. Just him and me and the thing I loved most in the world.
He’d say yes. I knew he would. Because he’d see what it meant, that I’d bought him skates, that I’d had them in the car since Friday, that I was here in the middle of his Monday with my whole heart in my hands.
He was going to say yes, and we were going to fix this.
I could see it. I could feel it. I was already planning what I’d say first, how I’d tell him about the edges, how I’d show him the right way to stand.
I reached for the door.
And I heard him laughing.
I stopped.
It was him. I knew his laugh. I hadn’t heard it in so long I’d almost forgotten what it sounded like, but it was his, easy and real, the way he used to laugh at home before everything went quiet.
He was happy.
I stood there in the hall with two skate bags in my hands and listened to my husband be happy in a room I wasn’t in.
The door was open a crack. I didn’t mean to look. I just did.
Corinne was standing next to him. She reached up and straightened his collar, her hand smoothing the fabric down, and it lingered. Just a beat longer than it needed to.
And he didn’t step back.
He didn’t move at all. He just stood there and let her.
That was all I saw. Her hand. His collar. The beat too long.
Nothing else.
I pulled back from the door and pressed my shoulders against the wall.
Nothing happened. That’s what he’d say if I asked him. And he’d be right. Nothing did happen. She straightened his collar and he didn’t step back and that was it.
But that was never what this was.
I sent him a message on Friday asking for one hour, and he sent me back four lines with her name in them.
Corinne didn’t have to ask.
She got his time. She got his ease. She got him laughing in the middle of a Monday, and I got four lines and a maybe and a day I was supposed to wait for that never came.
I wasn’t competing with another woman. I was competing with the version of him she got for free. And I’d already lost.
I stopped shaking.
It happened all at once, like something inside me went still. The heat drained out of my chest and my hands steadied and I wasn’t scared anymore.
I knew what I had to do.
I heard voices inside. The meeting was breaking up. Corinne walked out the far side of the office, toward the elevators, her phone already at her ear. She didn’t see me.
I waited until she was gone. Then I walked in.
Grant was alone. He looked up and saw me and for half a second he looked glad.
“Delia,” he said.
I didn’t answer. I crossed the room and set one of the skate bags down on the glass conference table. He looked at it, confused, like he didn’t know what it was.
I didn’t explain.
I reached up and pulled off my wedding ring. It came off easier than I thought it would. I took his hand and pressed the ring into his palm, and then I closed his fingers over it so he had to hold it.
He stared at me.
“I’m not asking you for anything any more,” I said.
He started to say something. I didn’t wait to hear it. I turned and walked out.
Thirty floors down. The same elevator, the same lobby, the same man at the desk who waved and smiled as I passed.
I got in my car and sat there for a minute with my phone in my hand.
Then I blocked his number.
The screen went dark and it was done.
I wasn’t devastated. I wasn’t even sad.
I was relieved.
I started the car and drove home.