‘Clever.’

‘Yeah.’

They both went silent.

Sara felt like she had had some variation on this conversation for the last week and a half. They talked about something terrible that Angie had done. They talked about work. One of them said something about grabbing a meal, over which they would have an even more stilted conversation, then Will would make an excuse about needing to go home so that he could finish some paperwork and Sara would go home and stare at the ceiling.

She said, ‘So, what else? It’s lunchtime. Are you hungry?’

‘I could eat.’

‘There’s nothing in the house. I’ll need to shower if we go out.’

‘I miss you.’

Sara was shocked by his directness.

‘I miss your voice. I miss your face.’ He walked toward her. ‘I miss touching you. Talking to you. Being with you.’ He stopped a few feet away. ‘I miss the way you rock your hips when I’m inside of you.’

Sara chewed her lip.

‘I’ve been trying to give you some time, but I feel like that’s not working. Like I should just start kissing you until you forgive me.’

If only it was that easy. ‘Babe, you know I’m not mad at you.’

He put his hands in his pockets. He didn’t look at the floor. He didn’t look past her shoulder. ‘I’ve got a court date at the end of next month. There’s something called a divorce by publication. You put a notice in the newspaper, and if you don’t hear back in six weeks, the judge can grant you a divorce.’

Sara felt her brow furrow. ‘Why didn’t you do this before?’

‘My lawyer said it would never happen. Judges don’t like to do it that way. They rarely sign off on it.’ He said, ‘I asked Amanda to pull in a favor and find me a judge who would.’

Sara knew how hard it was for Will to ask for help.

He said, ‘I’m sorry I kept things from you. I know my not telling you stuff is a big thing. And I’m sorry.’

She didn’t know what to say except ‘Thank you.’

He wasn’t finished. ‘The way I grew up, you had to hide the bad things. From everybody. It wasn’t just about people liking you or not liking you. If you acted out or said something wrong, it got passed on to your social worker and your social worker put it in a file and people—potential parents—they wanted normal kids. They didn’t want problems. So you had a choice. You either let yourself be really bad, like to let them know that you didn’t care whether or not they chose you. Or you kept your problems to yourself and hoped.’

Sara didn’t dare answer. He so rarely talked about his childhood.

He said, ‘With Angie, anything I told her, she would find a way to throw it back in my face. Find a way to hurt me with it or make me feel stupid or—’ He shrugged, likely because the possibilities were endless. ‘So I kept it all inside, no matter how important or inconsequential, because that was how I protected myself.’ He still did not look away. ‘I know you’re not Angie, and I know I’m not a kid living at the home anymore, but what I’m saying is that it’s a habit I have, the not telling you things. It’s not a character trait. It’s a flaw. And it’s something I can change.’

‘Will.’ Sara didn’t know what else to say. If he had told her all of this two weeks ago, she would’ve thrown herself into his arms.

‘I got you this.’ He took a key out of his pocket. He slid it across the counter. ‘I changed the locks. I installed an alarm. I changed the combination on my safe. I took myself off everything that has to do with Angie.’ He paused again. ‘I understand that you need time, but you need to understand that I am never, ever going to let you go. Not ever.’

She shook her head at the pointlessness. ‘I appreciate the sentiment, but there’s more to it than that.’

‘There really isn’t,’ he insisted, the same as he always did. ‘We don’t need to hash it out, because all that matters is how we feel about each other, and I know that you love me, and you know that I love you.’

All that Sara could see was a giant circle. He was apologizing for not talking about things, then saying that they should not talk about things.

‘Anyway,’ he finally said. ‘I’m gonna leave now, give you some time to think about this, maybe start missing me too.’ His hand rested on the doorknob. ‘I’ll be here when you make up your mind.’

The door clicked shut behind him.

Sara stared at the door. She shook her head again. She couldn’t stop shaking her head. She was like a dog with a tick in its ear. He was so infuriatingly elliptical.

I’ll be here when you make up your mind.

What did that even mean?

Here, as in the general ‘I’m here for you,’ or here, as in actually physically waiting right now in the hallway for her decision?

And why was it solely her decision in the first place? Shouldn’t the future of their relationship be something they decided together?

That was never going to happen.

She turned back to the kitchen. Pots and pans were scattered on the floor. The vacuum hose was full of dog hair. She would have to clean it out before she let it touch the cabinets. Or she could just give up on today, take a shower, get on the couch, and wait for a reasonable hour to drink.

The dogs followed her to the bathroom. She turned on the shower. She took off her clothes. She watched the water fall, but didn’t get in.

Will’s words played on an endless loop in her head. The memories worked at her irritation like a match striking flint. All that he’d offered her were Pyrrhic victories. He was finally divorcing Angie, but Angie would still be around. He had changed his locks, but Angie would find a way inside just like she had before. He had gotten an alarm. Angie would know the code, just like Will had known the code to unlock her cell phone. He’d said that he was never going to leave Sara. So what? Neither was Angie. This was just more of Will’s fairy-tale thinking that all he had to do was wait it out and everything would magically be okay.

Sara turned off the shower. She was so frustrated that her hands were shaking. She put on her robe as she walked back into the bedroom. She picked up the phone to call Tessa, but then she remembered the outhouse. And then she realized that calling her sister was pointless, because Tessa would only say the obvious: that in his usual roundabout way Will had just offered Sara everything that she had wanted from him for the last year and her response was to let him walk out the door.

Sara sat down on the bed.

Dumbass, she thought, but she didn’t know whether she meant herself or Will.

She had to look at this logically. Will’s earlier declarations could be interpreted one of two ways. One: he was going to try to be more open, but he would rather stick needles in his eyes than talk about their relationship. Two: why would they talk about what they wanted when they already had everything that they needed?

One and two. X and Y.

‘God dammit,’ Sara muttered. The only thing worse than her mother being right was when her little sister was.

Sara stood from the bed. She cinched her robe tight as she walked back up the hallway. She passed through the living room. The dogs followed her to the door. Their ears perked when Sara wrapped her hand around the knob.