I watched his face when he read it, because some part of me needed to see exactly what it did to him.
There was only one line.
“This was the year you stopped choosing her.”
David stood there holding 40 years of his own life in his hands, and for the first time since he’d walked through that door with Lydia, he looked like he genuinely didn’t know what to say.
There was only one line.
“No,” he finally said, his voice cracking. “Please. Stop. You can’t do this to me.”
Claire didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t reach for cruelty, even though I think every person in that room would have forgiven her for it.
“You can leave if that’s what you’ve already decided,” she said. “But don’t rewrite the story on your way out the door.”
The room was so quiet I could hear the air conditioning.
“You can’t do this to me.”
***
Lydia, standing near the entrance still in her green dress, looked like she very badly wanted to be anywhere else on earth.
Nothing else happened at that restaurant. No screaming. No dramatic scene.
Claire set down the microphone, took my arm, and walked me out to her car while the guests sat in a silence none of them seemed to know how to break.
The guests sat in a silence.
***
We sat there for a minute after the doors closed.
“Mom, I’m sorry,” she whispered. “For the envelope. For tonight. For not telling you sooner.”
I looked at her and waited.
“I started suspecting Dad was seeing someone months ago,” she added. “Not because of one big thing. Just little things that didn’t fit together anymore.”
“I started suspecting Dad was seeing someone.”
Claire rubbed her eyes.
“I started collecting those memories because I wanted him to remember what he was walking away from. I thought maybe if he saw it all in one place, he’d stop before he did something he’d regret.”
Her laugh was small and tired.
