That night he sat with Claire in the truck in the driveway, the engine running for the heat, the windows fogging, and told her. He told her he wanted to separate. He told her it wasn't punishment. He told her he had looked at it from every side and couldn't find a way to be married to her that didn't turn them both into prison guards. He told her he wanted to do it right, slowly, carefully, without lawyers making it ugly. He wanted Owen with both of them as close to half the time as the boy could handle. He would find a place nearby, close enough that Owen could ride his bike between the two houses when he was old enough.
Claire listened. She didn't argue. She had known, she said, maybe since Thanksgiving, maybe since the porch. She cried, and so did he. They sat in the fogged-up truck in the driveway of the house they had bought together seven years ago and held hands across the console like teenagers. It was the most honest they had been with each other in years, maybe in their whole marriage. That was its own grief.
IX.
They told Owen together, on a Saturday morning in late January, at the kitchen table, with pancakes. Dr. Marsh had told them to choose a calm day and a place that felt safe, to tell him the same story in the same words, and to tell him what wouldn't change before what would. They practiced in her office like two privates rehearsing for a promotion board.