Page 111 of Homewrecker

“Liar.”

His mouth twitched. “Maybe I was thinking about how different my life turned out from what I thought.”

Eventually he said, “I thought I’d be married once and for forever.”

My fingers tightened slightly around my glass. We’d touched the edges of it before, but never went inside.

“How long were you married?”

“Almost eight years.”

“Damn.”

“Yeah.”

“Was the divorce bad?”

He shook his head. “No.”

That surprised me. “No?”

“Not in the way people expect.”

He leaned back. “We didn’t fight over property, drag each other through court, or spend a year trying to destroy each other.”

“That sounds healthy.”

“It was.” He paused. “At the end.”

I saw a little bit of old hurt in his eyes.

“She was ready before I was,” he said. “Way before.”

“She had checked out of the marriage before I even realized it was something to check out of.”

Ouch. I felt that. I wanted to tell him I was sorry. But instead I asked, “How did you know?”

He gave a small laugh. “I didn’t. She told me.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.” He looked toward the living room. “One day she just said she didn’t think she could do it anymore.”

“What did you say?”

“Everything people say when they don’t want something to end.”

He shrugged. “Therapy. Date nights. Trips. More communication. Less work. Whatever I thought could fix it.”

“Did y’all try?”

“For a while.”

“And?”

He smiled sadly. “You can’t repair something when both people aren’t trying to rebuild. She was already gone.”

“Emotionally?”