“My house is the last place I want to be tonight.”
I didn’t ask why.
I simply waited.
After another minute, she pointed toward a road leading away from her neighborhood.
“Could you take me somewhere else?”
“Anywhere you want.”
She turned toward me, and for the first time that evening, I saw the full weight of whatever she had been carrying.
“Thank you.”
I followed the road north.
We drove past closed offices, dark storefronts, and long rows of trees glistening beneath the streetlights. Eventually, the city overlook appeared ahead of us.
Daniel and I used to come there as teenagers. We would sit on the hood of my battered first car, eating gas-station snacks and complaining about exams, girlfriends, and parents who seemed determined to make our lives difficult.
I parked near the railing.
Below us, the city glowed through the rain.
Karen folded her hands in her lap.
For nearly a minute, she said nothing.
Then she whispered, “Michael wants a divorce.”
I turned toward her.
“What?”
“My husband sat across from me at breakfast this morning and told me he hasn’t loved me for eight years.”
I felt an immediate, irrational anger.
“He said that to you?”
“He said he had been staying because Daniel needed stability. Then because his mother became ill. Then because selling the house would be inconvenient.”
She let out a short, humorless laugh.
“Apparently, my marriage became a collection of excuses.”
I struggled to find words.
Michael Mercer had always seemed like a man who had everything under control. He was a successful executive, a polished speaker, and the sort of person who could make a roomful of strangers feel that he was the most important person in it.
I had never seen him as a cruel man.
I was beginning to understand how little I knew about him.
“What happened today?” I asked.
Karen stared at her hands.
“He told me there’s another woman.”
My jaw tightened.
“How long?”
“He claims six months.”
“Do you believe him?”
She shook her head.
“Not anymore.”
Her voice became smaller.
“I found hotel charges from two years ago. Trips he said were business meetings. Restaurant bills from nights he told me he was working late.”
She pressed her lips together.
“He looked me in the eye and lied so easily that I started wondering whether I had imagined the entire marriage.”
“You didn’t imagine it.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know you loved him.”
She looked at me.
“And what good did that do me?”
I had no clever answer.
So I gave her the truth.
“It doesn’t make what he did your fault.”
For a long moment, she watched me.
Then she looked away, and tears began slipping down her cheeks.
She wiped them quickly, almost angrily.
“I hate this.”
