“You don’t need to get sarcastic.”
“I’m not being sarcastic. That’s literally my job.”
Rebecca walked away.
I followed.
“You went through my messages?”
“The notification appeared.”
“And then you opened the thread.”
“You’re making this bigger than it is.”
“Am I?”
“If there’s nothing there, why do you care?”
That sentence bothered me.
I didn’t know how to explain why.
Not then.
Rebecca had turned privacy into evidence.
If I objected to being searched, objection itself became suspicious.
I dropped it.
Again.
A month later, I turned off location sharing for an afternoon because the tracking app was draining my battery while I was working in a basement with almost no cellular service.
Rebecca called within twenty minutes.
“Where are you?”
“At work.”
“Your location is off.”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“Battery.”
“Turn it back on.”
I laughed.
“What?”
“It makes me nervous.”
I remember standing beneath exposed floor joists with dust in my hair, holding my phone away from my face.
“Rebecca, I’m thirty-nine years old.”
“I know how old you are.”
“You don’t need a map of me.”
“I’m your wife.”
“I know.”
“Then why is this an issue?”
There it was again.
Why is this an issue?
Not why does this bother you?
The difference mattered.
I turned location sharing back on.
That evening Rebecca was affectionate.
Almost unusually so.
She ordered Thai food.
Opened wine.
Sat close to me on the couch.
I convinced myself the entire thing had been stupid.
Maybe she was anxious.
Maybe I had been insensitive.
Marriage required accommodation.
That was the word I used.
Accommodation.
I did not use control.
The night everything ended was a Wednesday in October.
I got home at 6:40.
Rebecca was sitting in the living room with the television off.
No book.
No phone.
Nothing in her hands.
That was the first sign.
The second was that she had not changed out of her work clothes.
Rebecca always changed immediately.
She hated wearing office clothes at home.
I set my keys in the bowl near the door.
“Everything okay?”
She looked at me.
“We need to talk.”
No good sentence has ever started that way.
I sat across from her.
“What happened?”
Rebecca inhaled.
Then said it.
“I don’t love you anymore.”
No build-up.
No qualification.
For several seconds, my brain behaved as though I had misunderstood the language.
“What?”
She looked down.
“I don’t think I love you anymore.”
The addition of think somehow made it worse.
“How long?”
“I don’t know.”
“Rebecca.”
“Months.”
I stared.
The clock on the wall clicked.
Archie’s old collar still hung from a hook near the bookshelf.
A truck passed outside.
Everything ordinary continued existing while my marriage ended.
“Is there someone else?”
“No.”
The answer came quickly.
I watched her.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Then what happened?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“Owen, please.”
“What do you want me to do with that?”
She stood.