Chapter 17
Chapter
Seventeen
Marilyn
He answered on the second ring. I almost hung up anyway, but forced myself to speak.
“Michael,” I said, “would you like to have dinner?”
The silence that followed was long enough to make my heart race. I realized he was trying to find a tone that didn’t give away too much hope.
“Yes,” he said. “Name the time and place.”
I chose a restaurant in Sausalito, somewhere we’d never been together, just to keep the memories at bay.
He was already there when I arrived, looking anxious but not desperate. He stood to greet me, but didn’t reach for my hand.
The first half hour was careful, full of small talk about the kids, my new job, a mutual friend’s promotion, the latest news about the company he’d left behind. It felt like a first date with someone you already knew too much about.
When the waiter cleared the dinner plates, I took a breath and said, “I haven’t withdrawn the divorce petition. I might not.”
He nodded. “I figured.”
“I’m not here because I feel sorry for you,” I said, more to myself than to him. “And not because I can’t imagine a life without you.”
“I know,” he said.
I let the silence expand, then filled it: “But part of me still wants to know if we can be different people, together.”
His eyes shone, and for a second I thought he might break down right there. Instead, he just said, “I’d like that.”
I wasn’t promising anything, and he didn’t try to make me.
Afterward, we walked along the waterfront, a safe distance apart, and talked about the past in a way that made it feel less sharp.
When we parted, he didn’t ask if I’d see him again.
But I knew, in that moment, that I would.
We didn’t call it dating, because that would have implied a return to something old. Instead, we settled into a routine of coffee in Mill Valley, the occasional dinner, long walks along the Tiburon waterfront. With every meeting, the distance between us shrank by a millimeter.
We talked about everything but the affair.
The kids, our friends, the state of the country, the marathon I’d decided to train for just to prove I could do something hard and pointless.
He told me about therapy—not as an argument for reconciliation, but as an ongoing project.
The way he described it, counseling was less about fixing the past than about figuring out what kind of man he wanted to be from here on out.
He never apologized for the same thing twice. He didn’t try to turn every conversation into a test of my forgiveness. He let me say “no” to plans, and when I did, he didn’t push. Instead, he’d just wait for the next time.
After a month of this, I realized I looked forward to our talks. I liked the new version of Michael: not more humble, exactly, but less convinced of his own indispensability.
One afternoon, walking by the marina, he said, “I’m still going to therapy every week.”
I glanced at him. “I know. I asked the kids. They said you haven’t missed one.”
He smiled, a little sheepish. “It’s not about us anymore. Not just about us.”
I understood what he meant: he was doing the work for himself, not just to win me back.
For the first time in months, I let myself believe in the possibility of something new.
Not the marriage we’d had.
But something that could survive what we’d been through.
After dinner one evening, he walked me to the door of my house. The moment felt oddly formal, like we were back in college and one of us had to make the first move.
He said, “Can I kiss you?”
It caught me off guard. Not because he asked, but because he actually waited for an answer.
I wanted to say yes. But the memory of that day—of recoiling from his touch—hung between us. Instead, I said, “Not yet.”
He didn’t flinch, didn’t try to convince me, didn’t sulk. He just nodded and stepped back, hands in his pockets, the way he always did when he wanted to let the moment be.
As he turned to go, I reached out and touched his cheek, just for a second.
The old tenderness was still there, hidden under months of hurt.
When he drove away, I watched the taillights all the way down the hill.
Inside, I stood in the foyer for a long time, hand pressed to my own cheek, amazed at how something so small could feel like forgiveness.