Chapter Four
Jill
Robert left before seven, already dressed by the time I came downstairs, his tie half knotted while he scrolled through something on his phone, his suit jacket draped over the back of a barstool, a cup of coffee going cold on the counter beside him because he'd started it and then gotten distracted before he finished it, the way he started and abandoned so many small things in the mornings, his attention already fourteen floors up before his body had even left the house.
He kissed the top of my head on his way to the door with the absent efficiency of a man checking a box, a gesture so practiced it required no thought at all, and I stood there with my coffee mug in both hands and felt the kiss land somewhere near my scalp without registering anywhere closer to my heart.
"Saturday," he said again, pausing at the door to look back at me with an expression that seemed to expect gratitude, or at least relief, and I was gone before I could decide whether I wanted to answer him, though he was the one who left first, the front door closing behind him with its soft click before I had managed to say anything at all.
I stood in the kitchen with my coffee going cold and the folded itinerary still in the pocket of my robe, its edges soft against my hip, and I thought about the version of myself who had written half of that list in careful handwriting at a diner table on Van Ness, twenty-six years old and certain that the man across from her would build a life big enough for both of them, not understanding yet that a life built that large could still somehow leave no room for the person it was supposedly built around.
I called Mallory a little after eight, standing at the window watching the fog do its slow retreat over the bay, and she picked up on the second ring, already sharp with the alertness of a friend who has learned to read the register of a voice before the words arrive, a skill built from fifteen years of friendship and more late-night phone calls than either of us could count.
"I'm leaving," I said, before she could ask how the anniversary dinner went, the words coming out faster than I'd planned, tumbling over each other. "Not leaving Robert. Leaving. I need to go somewhere, Mal, and I need to go today."
There was a pause on the line, brief, and then she said, "Tell me what you need," which was the exact sentence I had needed someone to say to me for longer than I wanted to admit, no questions first, no careful assessment of whether my crisis warranted the drama I was bringing to it, only a friend already reaching for whatever would help.
I told her about the conference room while she opened her laptop, I could hear the keys under her voice, rapid and businesslike, and I told her about the bass gone cold in the refrigerator and the question Robert hadn't been able to answer in bed, and Mallory listened without interrupting, which was its own gift from a woman who usually had an opinion ready before you finished a sentence, who had opinions about everything from my highlights to my choice of throw pillows and had never once been shy about sharing them.
"Business class to Rome," she said finally, still typing. "There's a flight out of SFO at four this afternoon. I can book it under Bennett. Nobody at that airline is going to connect Jill Bennett to Robert Mercer's wife unless you tell them."
"Bennett," I repeated, my maiden name sitting strange and familiar in my mouth at the same time, a name I hadn't worn in years but that still fit, the way an old coat still fits even after you've forgotten you owned it, tucked at the back of a closet through a decade of different weather.
There was a pause on the line, and when Mallory spoke again her voice had lost some of its briskness. "Can I say something you might not want to hear?"
"When has that ever stopped you."
"I don't think this is really about last night," she said.
"I think last night was the excuse you'd been waiting for.
I've watched you rearrange your whole life around that man for twelve years, Jill, and I never once said anything because you never once asked me to, but you've been unhappy a lot longer than one bad sentence in a conference room.
You just finally have a reason you can point to. "
I stood there holding the phone, the truth of it landing somewhere I hadn't let myself look in a long time, and I didn't argue with her, because I couldn't, because some part of me had known it since long before last night, maybe since the fifth anniversary, maybe since even before that.
"I know," I said quietly. "I think I've known for a while. I just kept telling myself the next milestone would fix it. The acquisition. The building. Whatever came after that."
"There's always going to be a next milestone," Mallory said. "That's not a flaw in the plan, Jill. For Robert, that's the plan."
I sat with that for a moment, watching a gull circle low over the yard, and something in the plainness of the observation landed harder than anything else she'd said.
"Then good," Mallory went on, gentler now.
"Go. Don't feel like you need a bigger reason than the one you've got.
You'll need your passport, the one in your own name, not the joint account paperwork.
And Jill, listen to me. Don't tell him where you're going.
Not the destination, not the airline, nothing.
If he calls me, I'm not going to lie and say I don't know where you are, because he'll see through that in about four seconds. I'm just not going to answer."
I thanked her in a voice that came out smaller than I meant it to, my throat tight in a way that surprised me, and she told me she'd have the confirmation in my inbox within the hour, and then, because she was Mallory and had never once let me get away with avoiding the real question, she asked if I was sure, her voice softening for the first time since I'd called.
I told her I wasn't sure of anything except that I couldn't sit at that marble island for one more anniversary waiting for a man to remember I existed, and saying it out loud, to someone who wasn't going to talk me out of it, made the decision feel suddenly, irreversibly real.
"One more thing," Mallory said, before we hung up. "When you land, whenever that is, wherever you end up, I want you to text me one word, just so I know you're safe. Doesn't have to be more than that. I'm not going to smother you with check-ins, I promise, but I need that much."
"I can do that."
"And Jill, if at any point you want to come home, for any reason, good or bad, I'll come get you myself. I don't care what continent you're on. Just say the word."
I sat with that promise for a long moment after we hung up, the particular steadiness of a friendship that had outlasted every version of myself I'd tried on over fifteen years, and I understood that whatever happened next, I wasn't leaving one kind of loneliness for another.
I was leaving toward something, even if I couldn't yet say what.
I packed light, a habit I still remembered from the years before Robert, when travel meant one bag and no itinerary and the thrill of not knowing where you'd sleep the following night, back when uncertainty had felt like adventure instead of the threat it had somehow become somewhere in the intervening years.
I took my old camera down from the closet shelf where it had sat for nine years collecting dust, the leather strap gone stiff and cracked at the fold, the body heavier in my hands than I remembered, and I found, tucked in the bottom of the bag, three rolls of film I had never developed, souvenirs of a career I had set down so gently I hadn't noticed I was setting it down at all, the way you might set down a cup of tea to answer the phone and simply never pick it back up.
I packed clothes that had nothing to do with galas or groundbreakings, jeans and worn shirts and a single decent dress in case I needed one, folding each item with a brisk efficiency that surprised me, my hands remembering a rhythm they hadn't used in years.
I packed my passport, the private one, the one that still said Bennett because I had never gotten around to changing it, a fact that had embarrassed me for years, one more piece of unfinished paperwork I'd meant to handle and never had, and that now felt like the only foresight I'd ever shown myself, a door I hadn't known I was leaving open.
I stopped, halfway through zipping the bag, and sat down on the edge of the bed, the itinerary still folded in my robe pocket, and I let myself cry for a few minutes, not because I was afraid of what I was doing, but because some part of me still mourned the version of this marriage I had spent twelve years hoping would eventually arrive, the one where Robert walked through the door on time, where the bass didn't go cold, where wanting something out loud didn't feel like a risk.
I gave myself those few minutes and then I wiped my face and finished packing, because grief and decision could apparently sit in the same body at the same time, and neither one needed to wait for the other to finish.
Before I left, I stood in the bedroom and looked at the bed we shared, the duvet still rumpled on his side from that morning, and at Robert's side of the closet, suits arranged by season the way I had arranged them for a decade, charcoal and navy in the cooler months, lighter grays come spring, and I took off my wedding ring and set it on his pillow, where he would find it exactly where his head would land, the diamond catching the morning light in a way that felt almost cruel in its beauty.
Beside it I left a single line, written on a card from the desk drawer, because I had nothing more to say to him that I hadn't already said with twelve years of showing up, twelve years of setting tables and confirming calendars and remembering everyone's birthday but my own plans.
*I heard what you said. You don't have to regret marrying me anymore.*
Then I picked up my bag and my camera and drove myself to the airport, alone, for the first time in longer than I could remember, the city receding in the rearview mirror in pieces, the bridge, the hills, the particular slant of morning light I had watched from that kitchen window for a decade, and I didn't look back at the house getting smaller behind me, because I had spent enough years looking back.