That is a decision.
You made it over and over again, every single Thursday, for seven months.”
The car behind him tapped its horn lightly.
The line was moving.
Ryan’s hands were on the wheel.
He didn’t move.
“I know,” he said.
“I know what I did.”
“I need you to get a hotel tonight,” I said.
“Not Marcus’s.
A hotel.
I need space that isn’t borrowed from your family.”
He nodded once.
Toby came running out the front door with his backpack bouncing, waving at both of us at once.
He asked for a meeting.
That was the word he used — *meeting* — in a text on Saturday morning, and something about that word told me he had been coached.
Ryan didn’t use words like *meeting* for conversations about his own marriage.
I said yes.
Toby was at my sister Dana’s for the afternoon.
Ryan arrived at the house at two o’clock with a folder under his arm.
He had shaved.
He was wearing the gray sweater I had bought him two Christmases ago.
I noticed both things and said nothing about either.
We sat at the kitchen table.
The same table where I had set the key down three days ago.
