Page 36 of Wreckage and Rain

"Babe..."

I pick up my keys. He doesn't finish the sentence.

***

Autumn is already at the coffee shop on Calhoun Street, corner booth, sunglasses on indoors because she has been crying for me on the drive over and refuses to let strangers see it.

She stands when I walk in. Hugs me hard. Sits me down. Pushes a coffee across the table.

"Tell me everything that happened after you left my apartment."

I tell her.

The phone call I overheard from the front porch. Cheyenne. How he said her name. The shoes off, up the stairs, the shower. Standing in the bathroom in a towel. Coming downstairs injeans. Making coffee while he tried to remember how to breathe. How I didn't turn around when he said my name.

Autumn listens. She doesn't interrupt. The sunglasses don't come off until I finish.

When I do, she pulls them off. Her eyes are red.

"He didn't even know you were home."

"No, but even worse he didn't even know why I didn't come home. He never called, or texted. But he was on the phone with her like it was just this normal thing to do."

"Summer."

"I know."

"Summer."

"I know, Autumn."

She takes a long breath. Folds her hands on the table.

"Okay. Forget what he deserves for a minute. What do you want?"

That is the hard question, but it is the right one. Autumn always asks the right question. It is why I have called her at three in the morning every time something hurt for fifteen years. She doesn't ask me how I feel. She asks me what I want. Because she knows the first one will paralyze me and the second one will move me.

"I want my husband back."

"The version of him that you fell in love with, or the version that walked past me at brunch last month and barely registered I was in the room?"

"The one I fell in love with."

"Then you can't have what you want. That version of him is gone. The question is whether the man living in your house right now is salvageable, and the question after that is whether you have the energy to find out."

I look at the coffee. I haven't touched it.

"I want to scream at him."

"Then scream at him."

"And then I want to be left alone."

"Then tell him that."

"And then I want him to fix it. Without me having to tell him how to do it."

She nods. Slow. "That part isn't going to happen on your timeline. Men in his position don't fix things. They wait to be left, and then they grovel after the fact. So you have a choice. You can leave now and see if he chases. Or you can put the choice on him in the next twenty-four hours and find out who he is when the consequences are real."