Renée sat with that. It was, she thought, the truest thing he had ever said to her. It was also the thing that hurt most, because it was not a story about a woman in a silver cardigan. It was a story about the two of them. About eleven years of a marriage in which she had been driving and he had been in the passenger seat, looking out the window, and neither of them had ever said so.
"I don't know if I can trust you," she said. "That's the truth. I read those texts. Anytime. I mean it. At two in the morning while I was at work. And I keep thinking, if Ivy hadn't opened that bag, would you have told me? Ever?"
"I don't know," he said. And then, after a moment, "Probably not. I'd like to think I would have. But probably not."
She almost laughed. "That's the first time you haven't told me the right answer."
"I'm trying."
"I know you are." She looked at the tree, at the two canning jar lids turning side by side on the low branch. "I want you to move out after New Year's."
He closed his eyes.
"Not forever," she said. "Not necessarily forever. I don't know what forever is right now. But I can't keep sleeping in the guest room down the hall from you, pretending for Ivy. And I can't make a real decision with you right here, because I'll just do what I always do. I'll decide. I'll be sure. And I don't want to be sure this time. I want to actually know."
"Okay," he said. His voice was thick. "Kevin has the basement in Joliet. Or I can find a place closer. So I can still take Ivy to school."
"Find a place closer." She pulled the throw off her shoulders and folded it and laid it across the back of the couch. "And I want us to see someone. A counselor. Together, and separately. You need to figure out what you want, Matt. Not what I want. Not what your mother wants. Not what Lauren wanted when she was seventeen. You."
"And then what?"