Chapter 4 - The Duffel Bag
Hours later, back at the site, Marcus glanced over from where he was measuring a run of pipe.
"Everything all right at the house?"
I made myself nod. "Yeah. Fine."
He smiled and handed me a fitting like nothing in the world was wrong. Nothing about him looked guilty.
Somehow that was worse.
I barely said ten words the rest of the day. Every memory from the last seven months quietly rearranged itself into something else. The appointments. The phone calls she took out on the porch with her back to the door. The nights she came home smelling faintly of paint, which I'd shrugged off because she'd mentioned once that her clinic was being remodeled.
Now every little thing looked like evidence.
When I got home, Theo came barreling at me wearing one of my old ball caps turned around backward.
"Daddy, look! I'm you."
I picked him up and held on to him so hard he wriggled to get loose.
Nora appeared in the kitchen doorway, drying her hands on a dish towel.
"Dinner's ready."
She looked exactly like the woman I'd married six years ago. For one dangerous second I let myself believe I'd dreamed the whole thing on the drive over.
Then I heard it again. Her voice through that window. Every single word.
Dinner was painfully normal. Theo announced that green beans made him "strong like Daddy." Nora laughed and kissed the top of his head. I smiled when somebody looked at me. Every ordinary thing at that table felt staged for my benefit.
After Theo went down, Nora sat next to me on the couch with two mugs of tea.
"You've been quiet tonight."
"Long day."
She looked at me a beat too long. "Something at work?"
I almost asked her straight out who was moving in next week.
Instead I took the mug and said, "Thanks."
Her whole body seemed to loosen with relief.
That relief was what finally broke something loose in me.
Before sunrise, while she was dropping Theo at daycare, I packed a duffel bag and set my wedding ring on the dresser where she'd see it.
By noon I was on my brother Wes's couch.
Nora started calling before I'd even unzipped the bag. Then again. Then again. By dark I had eleven missed calls and seven texts.
Grant, please pick up.
You're scaring me.
I don't understand what's happening.
Please just come home.
I read every one. I answered none of them.
Two days later I sat across a desk from a divorce attorney. Saying it out loud made my stomach turn.
"I think my wife has been lying to me for months."
She didn't rush me. She just slid a folder across the desk and said, "You don't have to file anything today. Sometimes people only need to know what their options are."
I walked out with that folder under my arm like I was carrying a death certificate for a marriage that was still breathing.
Nora didn't stop. She left a pan of lasagna on Wes's porch. She sent a photo of Theo holding up a crayon sign that read COME HOME DADDY. Then one morning I found a folded letter tucked under my windshield wiper.
It started with three words.
Please trust me.
I couldn't. Not because I didn't want the truth. Because I didn't think I could survive another lie stacked on top of the first one.
Three evenings later, Marcus knocked on Wes's door, hands buried in his jacket pockets.
"I know you're angry," he said. "You've got every right to be."
"I don't have one thing to say to you, Marcus."
"Figured as much." He looked past me at my truck in the driveway. "But before you do something you can't take back, give me one hour tomorrow morning. That's all I'm asking."
"I heard plenty that day. Standing in my own yard, listening to you and my wife."
"No," he said, quiet. "You heard half a conversation."
May you like
He set an envelope on the porch rail.
"Address is inside. Come or don't."
