She walks out of the closet, a stack of folded clothes in her arms. She looks at me, her eyes wide like she’s been caught doing something she isn’t supposed to, but it slips away, replaced with silence.
“What’s going on?”
She still doesn’t answer, but her movements become rough. Harsh and curt, as if she’s taking her anger out on her clothes.
“Kendall,” I push. “Are you going somewhere?”
“I talked to Sylvia today,” she finally tells me, her eyes on her suitcase. “And since I started summer break last week and Sophia’s last day was Wednesday, I thought I’d go visit for a few weeks.”
“When?”
She doesn’t answer me.
“When are you leaving?” I ask again.
“Sunday,” she tells me, annoyance steady in her answer. “I booked a morning flight.”
My insides feel like they’re whirring inside a blender, loud and chaotic. A quiver settles in my stomach, and I don’t know if I’m going to like the direction this conversation is heading. “When were you going to tell me?” I manage.
“When you got home,” she answers coolly. Everything about her is distant and cold. Like there’s a double-paned glass wall between us, and it doesn’t even bother her. In fact, she prefers it this way. Always, for the rest of our lives, seeing me through an immovable barrier, one neither one of us will ever be able to test or push.
“Kendall, I— Why didn’t you talk to me about this? I want—I would’ve wanted to know?—”
“It’s fine,” she interrupts. She steps away to a drawer in what can only look like avoidance, but she hides it well by gathering more clothes. “I just used our points, so I got a good deal onthe tickets, and Sylvia said there’s plenty of room for Sophia and me?—”
“You’re taking Sophia with you?”
“Of course.” She finally looks at me, anger flaring in her eyes. “You thought I’d leave Sophia here with you? You still have to go to work.”
“I mean, I don’t know,” I tell her. “I just—this is kind of sudden.” I pause, stumbling over my words. “Can—can you please stop packing for a second and just talk to me about this?”
She huffs a sigh, her tense body language and the sag in her shoulders difficult to decipher. I don’t know if she’s angry or frustrated or…just giving up. She braces the edges of the suitcase and says, “There’s nothing to talk about. I’m visiting our friends.”
“Are you going to see your mom too?” It’s an irrelevant question considering there are bigger topics to discuss. Her mom lives just over an hour away from Sylvia and Tommy’s, so it’s not a completely erroneous inquiry. And I guess I’m stalling a little bit too, hoping I can sway her with a few more minutes of her time. We can plan things out a little better. I can take some time off work too if she’d give me a second to get things in motion, and I can join her. If she’ll have me.
“She and my stepdad are in Canada,” she answers. “They won’t be back until the end of the month.”
“So, you’re just going to visit Sylvia?”
“I’m just…getting away for a few weeks.”
“From me?” I ask, saying what we’re both avoiding. “Are you getting away from me?”
“No,” she answers instantly, a groan rumbling past her lips. She knocks over a bundle of socks that was sitting at the edge of the bed, and they tumble around us. “I don’t know, James.”
Her honesty feels like a stake driven into my chest. I’m not supposed to be someone she needs to get away from. I’m herhusband. I’m supposed to be the one she comesto. The silence between us turns delicate, and I know we need to tread carefully if we ever want to come back from this. And I want to. I want to come back from this. I want my wife back. I want our family back. I want her.
“I think a little time apart would be good for us,” she finally says, sadness leaching into the strain in her voice. I can hear the tears she’s holding back. As if they’ve turned into a solid knot lodged in her throat. “I think it would help us think about things to see if…”
“What?” I take a step closer. She doesn’t turn away. And I almost believe the hope that we’ll be okay. Maybe she’ll sit down and talk about this instead of running away.
“To see if we want to keep doing…this.”
“If.” I say the single-syllable word as if I’m testing it out. Feeling the rough, spiky letters on my tongue only to confirm my assumption of it. I hate the taste. The impossibility of it. The disappointment and failure of it.If. We should’ve never turned into an if. We’re a sure thing. We’ve always been a sure thing.
“I know this isn’t…how we thought things would be,” she continues. “But I don’t know, maybe this will begoodfor us. Some distance and space.” Something about her softens, becomes gentle and easy. As if saying all of this feels like a weight lifted off her shoulders. And as she moves closer, I notice how she’s been holding so much back. It took a breaking point for those cracks to splinter all the way open.
“Kendall, I don’t know if you going away for the summer is going to ‘fix’ things,” I try to argue. “We should be talking about things and doing this?—”
