Chapter 7 - Mine to Figure Out
Daniel was waiting up when I got home.
"You met her."
"I did."
Relief flooded his face. "Thank you."
"I didn't do it for you."
"I know."
"I don't think you do."
I set my keys in the bowl by the door. "She's eight, Daniel. She deserves to exist without being treated like something you have to hide."
He nodded.
"But Jasper and Eli don't meet her until I say they're ready."
"Okay."
"And you're going to stay somewhere else for a while."
His face dropped. "Corinne."
"I need room to think without you standing over my shoulder, steering how I get there."
"Are you leaving me?"
The old me would have needed the answer that second. Yes or no. Stay or go. Something with hard edges I could file into a folder.
I let it stay shapeless.
"I don't know."
His eyes filled. "I'll do anything."
"Then start with this."
"With what?"
"Not knowing. Sitting in it. You spent a year and a half deciding the truth could wait because you were scared of what came next." I held his eyes. "You don't get to make that call for me anymore."
Two weeks later, Daniel came by to be with the boys. We weren't pretending things had snapped back to normal. He was at his mother's. We'd started having the hard conversations without treating every one like a verdict on the whole marriage.
Ivy still hadn't met the twins. I wasn't ready. And for once, I didn't spend the night beating myself up for needing time.
Daniel sat on the living room rug with Eli tucked against his chest while Jasper rolled toward a rattle by my foot.
"They've changed already," he said quietly.
After a while, his hand drifted across the rug toward mine. Then he stopped, an inch short, and pulled it back.
That mattered.
Ivy's drawing of the twins sat on the coffee table between us.
I still didn't know if the marriage would make it. I didn't know when my sons would meet their sister. I didn't know if I'd ever trust Daniel the way I used to.
For five years, uncertainty scared me so badly that I tried to schedule my way around it. The next appointment. The next shot. The next feeding. The exact minute my husband's car would pull into the driveway.
Now there was no timetable at all.
And somehow, I could still breathe.
"I'm not ready to forgive you," I said.
"I know."
"But I'm not deciding today that I never will."
He nodded.
I picked up Ivy's drawing and pressed the curled corner flat with my thumb.
May you like
I didn't know what tomorrow looked like. This time, I didn't need Daniel — or anyone else — to decide it for me.
It was mine to work out.
