I walked through the house slowly, one hand beneath my belly. Everything looked exactly as it had the last time I stood there, which struck me as faintly absurd. The same framed photos. The same blanket folded over the arm of the couch. The nursery at the end of the hall with its pale green walls and the white crib we had bought at a store in March and assembled on a Sunday afternoon during which barely a word had passed between us. Abuse hides well inside ordinary rooms. It positions itself behind nice furniture and wedding photographs and makes outsiders wonder whether the damage can really be that serious if the setting looks so normal from the outside.
I stood in the nursery doorway for a moment and felt the grief come. Not for the marriage itself, which had been failing for long enough that its death felt more like a slow recognition than a sudden loss. I grieved the version of things I had kept trying to build. The family I had kept telling myself we could still become if I were patient enough and careful enough and good enough. The story where effort was sufficient. I had carried that version alongside the real one for a very long time, and standing there, I finally let it go.
Eric spoke from the hallway. “Claire. Can we please talk?”
I turned toward him. “You had your chance. In the car.”
“I told you I was sorry.”
“No,” I said. “You told me you were stressed.”
He pushed his hand through his hair in the way he did when he wanted to seem exasperated with unreasonable behavior. “Alright. I’m sorry. Genuinely. But calling the police, bringing lawyers, trying to cut me off from my own child…”
