Tina played it twice.
“He still thinks leaving was your idea.”
Then she looked at me.
“Do you hear it?”
“Hear what?”
“He still thinks leaving was your idea.”
I nodded.
“What do you think?”
“I think that’s why he hated me talking to you.”
She sat quietly for a moment.
“I think that’s why he hated me talking to you,” she said. “Not because you controlled me.”
She looked at me.
“Because you reminded me I could disagree with him.”
I squeezed her hand.
A week later, Tina went back for her things with Dad and two friends.
“What happened to it?”
She came home with three boxes and her favorite coffee mug.
No shoe.
“What happened to it?” I asked.
She shrugged.
“I left it on his porch.”
That made me laugh harder than anything had in weeks.
She still had difficult days, but she had started calling me again.
Untangling the marriage took time. Whenever Tina wondered whether she’d ruined her life, I reminded her of the bus stop.
“You walked away,” I told her.
“That’s what matters.”
She still had difficult days, but she had started calling me again, sometimes over things as ordinary as dinner plans.
