Chapter 6
Josephine
I USED TO TELL THEO everything. The funny story about the woman at the grocery store who insisted avocados could predict the weather.
The client who accidentally sent me an email meant for someone else and spent the next ten minutes apologizing over the phone.
The book I couldn’t put down, the recipe I’d ruined.
None of it was important, and that was the point.
Marriage wasn’t built on grand declarations.
It was built on a thousand ordinary moments that slowly became a shared life.
Somewhere along the way, I’d stopped collecting those moments for us. I still noticed them. I simply didn’t save them for Theo anymore.
On Tuesday morning I stopped at a café before heading into the office. The barista smiled when she saw me.
“The usual?” she asked.
“Please.”
While she made my coffee, my phone buzzed.
Theo: Thinking about you. Dinner tomorrow?
I stared at the message. A week ago I would have smiled immediately. Now I only looked at it. He was trying, and I knew he was, and trying after disappointing me had become its own pattern.
I typed back.
Me: Tomorrow works.
A few seconds later, three dots appeared.
Theo: I promise nothing will interrupt us.
My chest tightened. He meant it, every word, and I’d heard promises like that before.
I slipped the phone into my purse without replying.
“Large oat latte?”
I looked up. “That’s me.”
The walk to my office took less than ten minutes. The city buzzed around me with its usual weekday rhythm, and I barely registered any of it. I kept thinking about the message, about how quickly my mind had gone to all the ways tomorrow could fall apart.
That wasn’t who I’d been. I’d always assumed the best. Now I found myself quietly preparing for disappointment before it had happened. When had that changed?
I unlocked my office and set my bag beside my desk. My assistant, Trish, appeared a moment later.
“Morning,” she said.
“Morning.”
“You’ve got a call with Boston at ten, lunch with the Reynolds account at noon, and your three o’clock canceled.”
“Canceled?”
“They moved it to next week.”
I nodded. “Thanks.”
After she left, I opened my planner. Three free hours.
Without thinking, I reached for my phone, my thumb hovering over Theo’s name. A few months ago I would have asked if he wanted to meet for coffee, maybe lunch. Even fifteen minutes together would have been enough.
I lowered the phone. He’d probably be in meetings, and even if he wasn’t, there was always something, someone.
I placed the phone facedown on my desk. The thought had come so naturally that it startled me. Theo wanted to see me, I knew that. I’d simply stopped expecting him to be available, and that expectation had disappeared without my noticing.
Later that afternoon, I walked into a bookstore on my way home. Theo loved wandering bookstores with me. He always claimed he was only there to keep me company, and somehow he’d leave carrying two history books and a biography he’d never planned to buy.
I picked up a novel I’d been waiting to read and reached for my phone to send him a picture.
Look what finally came out.
My fingers paused over the screen. I pictured him opening the message between meetings. Maybe he’d respond immediately, maybe he wouldn’t see it until tonight, maybe he’d forget altogether.
Slowly, I locked the phone and slipped it back into my purse. I bought the book without sending the picture.
Such a small thing. A photograph, one message, one shared moment.
Yet walking back to my car, it carried more weight than it should have.
I wasn’t protecting myself from rejection.
I was protecting myself from expectation, because expectations led to disappointment, and disappointment had become exhausting.
That evening, Theo texted to say he was running late.
Theo: Another thirty minutes. Sorry.
I read the message once, then set my phone aside and opened my book. I didn’t look at the clock or pace the kitchen or wonder whether dinner would get cold.
When he finally came home, I reheated my plate without a word. He apologized, and I smiled.
“It’s okay,” I said.
The frightening part was that I almost meant it. It still hurt. I was slowly learning how not to need him quite as much.
That should have scared me. Instead it was quiet, a light in our marriage dimming so gradually that neither of us had noticed how dark the room had become.
Elizabeth Parker was already waiting when I arrived at the restaurant. She stood as I approached the table, wrapping me in a warm hug.
“It’s been too long,” she said.
“It has.”
She smiled as we sat down. Elizabeth had been my mentor during the first few years of my career, and we hadn’t worked together in years, though we still managed lunch every month or so. She’d celebrated our engagement and attended our wedding, and she’d known Theo almost as long as I had.
“So,” she said as we opened our menus, “how’s married life?”
The question was so ordinary that it almost made me laugh. “It’s fine.”
She didn’t look at the menu. She looked at me. “Just fine?”
I smiled. “We’re both busy.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
The waiter arrived before I could answer. We ordered, thanked him, and waited until he walked away.
Elizabeth folded her hands on the table. “Try again.”
I looked down at the glass of water in front of me. “Theo’s family needs him a lot.”
“I know.”
“They’ve always been close.”
“I know.”
“He never says no.”
She nodded slowly. “I’ve noticed.”
I traced my finger around the rim of my glass. “I don’t think he even realizes he’s doing it.”
“What?”
“Choosing them.” The words came out quieter than I’d expected. “Every time something comes up, our plans disappear.”
I told her about our anniversary, then the weekend at the lake, plainly and without drama. By the time I finished, my lunch had arrived untouched.
Elizabeth was silent for several moments. Finally she spoke.
“Can I tell you something?”
“Please.”
“I’ve watched the two of you together for years.”
I looked up.
“I’ve never doubted Theo loves you,” she said.
“I don’t either.”
“But love isn’t the same thing as attention.”
I swallowed. “He thinks it is.”
“I imagine he does.” She reached across the table and rested her hand over mine. “Josephine.” Her voice was gentle. “You shouldn’t have to compete for your husband’s attention.”
My eyes burned. “I don’t think I’m competing.”
“Then what would you call it?”
I searched for an answer, and nothing came.
Elizabeth gave my hand a small squeeze. “If every interruption ends with you stepping aside...” She let the thought hang for a moment. “Then you’re being asked to make the same sacrifice over and over again.”
I looked out the window. People hurried along the sidewalk carrying coffees, talking into phones, living lives that seemed wonderfully uncomplicated from where I sat.
“I keep telling myself the next time will be different,” I said.
“And is it?”
I didn’t answer.
“I know you, Josephine.”
I turned back toward her.
“You’re patient,” she said.
“I try to be.”
“You always have been.” She smiled sadly. “But patience isn’t supposed to become your entire role in a marriage.”
A lump settled in my throat. “I don’t want him to choose me instead of a sick child.”
“I know.”
“I would’ve told him to go.”
“I know.”
“Then why does it still hurt so much?”
Elizabeth didn’t hesitate. “Because this wasn’t about one sick child.” She held my gaze. “It was about years of learning that everyone else gets his immediate attention, and you get whatever time is left.”
The words matched a feeling I’d been carrying for months, maybe years, and hearing someone else say them out loud gave them shape.
For the first time, I wondered whether I’d been asking myself the wrong question. I kept asking why Theo never chose me first. Maybe the better question was why I’d convinced myself it was unreasonable to want him to.
That evening, the house was quiet. Theo had texted to say he was having dinner with a client and wouldn’t be home until late.
I replied with a single word.
Me: Okay.
No heart, no smiley face, no drive safely.
I set my phone on the kitchen counter and stared out the window for a long moment before walking upstairs.
Our bedroom was exactly as we’d left it that morning.
Theo’s watch rested on his nightstand, his cufflinks sat in the small wooden tray I’d bought him for our third anniversary, and a dry-cleaning ticket peeked out of the pocket of the suit jacket hanging on the closet door.
Little pieces of an ordinary life. A happy life, anyone looking from the outside would probably think.
I sat at my vanity and opened the top drawer. Inside was a leather-bound notebook I’d received as a Christmas gift years ago. I’d written in it a handful of times, vacation ideas, books I wanted to read, a few recipes, nothing personal. I picked it up anyway.
For several minutes I held the pen over the blank page. Then I began to write.
Theo,
The word looked strange on the paper, and the strangeness came from how long it had been since I’d written directly to him. I stared at it for another minute before continuing.
You’ll probably never read this. I’m not writing it because I expect you to. I’m writing it because I don’t know how to carry all of this in my head anymore.
I stopped. My eyes filled before I’d written a full paragraph. I took a slow breath and kept going.
You keep telling me you’ll make it up to me. I know you mean it every single time. That’s what makes this so hard. You’ve never tried to hurt me. You’ve just become so certain I’ll always understand that you stopped noticing how often I’m the one being asked to understand.
The words came easier now. Years of conversations I’d rehearsed in my mind and never spoken settled onto the page.
I don’t resent your family. I resent that I always disappear first.
I paused again. A tear landed on the paper, smudging the ink, and I wiped it away with the side of my hand.
Sometimes I wonder if you’d notice the difference between me asking for your time and me stopping altogether.
My chest tightened. I read the sentence twice, then a third time. It frightened me because it was honest, without drama or exaggeration in it.
I wrote one more line.
I miss being your first phone call.
The room blurred. I lowered the pen and closed the notebook before I could write anything else.
This wasn’t a letter I intended to give Theo, and it wasn’t a speech I planned to make. It was proof that somewhere along the way I’d started grieving a marriage that still existed.
I slipped the notebook back into the drawer and gently closed it, then turned off the bedside lamp and climbed into bed alone.
For the first time, I wondered whether a day would come when the words in that notebook stopped being a secret and became a goodbye.