“Laura,” he said quietly. “Tomorrow is our daughter’s wedding. Please. Please don’t do this tonight.”
“So you do know her.”
“It’s not what you think.”
“Then tell me what it is.”
He looked toward the hallway. Toward Emma’s old bedroom, where she was spending her last night as a single woman in the house she grew up in.
“I can’t,” he said.
“You can’t.”
“Not tonight. Not yet. I promise you, Laura. It’s not what you think. I’ll explain everything. I just can’t right now.”
“David. Who is she?”
“Please.”
He looked like a man standing on the edge of something very high.
And I don’t know why, but I didn’t push. Maybe because Emma was down the hall. Maybe because I didn’t want to hear the answer the night before my daughter’s wedding.
Maybe because thirty-one years of trust doesn’t just disappear in one evening. Even when it should.
I turned off the kitchen light and went to bed.
I didn’t sleep.
I lay on my side of the bed facing the wall. David lay on his side facing the other wall. Neither of us moved. Neither of us pretended to be asleep very well.
At two in the morning, I got up and went to the kitchen and sat in the dark at the table where we’d eaten breakfast together for three decades.
I thought about the day we got married. In my parents’ backyard, under a rented tent, in a July heat wave. David sweated through his shirt before the ceremony even started, and my mother made him change into my father’s. It was two sizes too big. He wore it anyway.
I thought about the day Emma was born. David holding her in the hospital, crying so hard the nurse had to take her back.
I thought about the ladder, and the gutters, and the scar.
And I thought, I’m going to have to smile through my daughter’s wedding tomorrow while my marriage is ending.
At five-thirty, I heard David’s footsteps in the hall. He stopped at the kitchen doorway. He saw me sitting there in the dark.
He didn’t come in.
After a while, he went back to bed.
Ethan Blake is a skilled Creative Content Specialist with a talent for crafting engaging and thought-provoking narratives. With a strong background in storytelling and digital content creation, Ethan brings a unique perspective to his role at TheArchivists, where he curates and produces captivating content for a global audience.
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