The months when he worked late.
The way he’d taken his phone into the garage.
The distance I’d told myself was just stress.
***
“You’re going to make yourself sick,” Diane told me one afternoon, three weeks later, dropping her purse onto my counter.
“I just need to understand.”
I kept turning it over in my mind.
“Ellie. He isn’t going to give you an answer. Not a real one.”
Then she slid an envelope across the table. Inside was a cruise ticket. A solo cabin. Seven days at sea.
“I can’t just leave.”
“You can. And you will. Because if you sit in this house one more week, I’m going to lose you while you drive yourself crazy searching for answers.”
I stared at the ticket. My name was printed in tidy black letters.
“I can’t just leave.”
The departure date was one week away.
“Di, I don’t even know who I am without him.”
