Chapter 8 - The Call I Finally Took
He called four more times over the next two days. I let every one go to voicemail, and I listened to every one.
They followed a pattern. The first was all apology. The next was quieter. The last was eleven seconds of nothing but him breathing before he hung up.
On the third day, I called him back.
He picked up before the second ring. "Nora."
"I read the letter," I said. "The one you gave Sabrina to hold onto."
A long pause. "She gave it to you."
"Yes."
"I didn't think she would."
"I think she surprised both of us." I was at the kitchen table. Erin was upstairs. I'd waited until she was upstairs. "I want to ask you something, and I need you to answer me straight. Not careful. Straight."
"Okay."
"If Erin hadn't come home. If she'd stayed gone and never said a word — were you ever actually going to tell me?"
The silence went on long enough that I had my answer before he opened his mouth.
"I told myself I would," he said finally. "I had a version in my head where I told you everything once things settled down. Once we had more time behind us."
"But?"
"But I don't know if I actually would have. I think I'd have kept waiting until it felt safe." A breath. "And it was never going to feel safe."
"No," I said. "It wasn't."
"Nora, I know I don't have the right to ask you for anything. But I need you to know I haven't spoken to Sabrina since October. Whatever she told you—"
"She told me the truth. Which is more than you ever managed."
He went quiet.
"There was a pregnancy before me too," I said. "Three years together. And you told me you'd never been in anything that counted."
"I know."
"That wasn't a slip, Wade. That was a decision. You sat down and decided what I was allowed to know about your life before you married me."
"I was scared you wouldn't want me if you knew all of it."
"You were probably right," I said. "And you took that choice out of my hands."
I heard him let out a breath.
"What are you going to do?" he asked.
"I've met with a lawyer. We're starting the process to have the marriage annulled — fraud in the inducement, she's calling it." I kept my voice flat. "She thinks we've got a strong case."
Another silence. Longer.
"I won't fight it," he said.
"I know you won't."
"Is there anything—" He stopped. Started over. "Is there anything I can do? For you, or for Erin?"
"You can sign the paperwork when it shows up," I said. "That's what you can do."
"Nora." His voice caught a little on my name. "I'm sorry. I know that doesn't fix anything. I just need you to know it's real."
I thought about the letter. The neat right-leaning handwriting. The line — I chose you, every single day — written two weeks into a marriage he was already getting ready to survive the end of.
"I believe you're sorry," I said. "I just don't think sorry is the point anymore."
I hung up.
I sat at the table a minute. The house was very quiet.
Then Erin appeared in the doorway in her socks, holding a book she'd obviously stopped reading a while ago.
"How'd it go?"
"It's done," I said. "Or it's going to be."
She came and sat across from me. "Are you okay?"
I thought about it honestly. "I think I'm going to be," I said. "I think that's enough for today."
May you like
She nodded. She opened her book again but didn't read it. She just sat there with me in the quiet kitchen, which was exactly what I needed.
Outside, it had started to rain. Light and steady. The kind of rain that doesn't ask anything of you.
