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From the bedroom window, she looked out across the road to the ocean beyond. She would no longer let sorrow drown her. Instead, she would think of it like the unceasing rhythm of the waves, rolling in, surrounding her, and receding while she planted her heels and toes in the shifting sand to stay, more or less, in place until the cycle began again.
In the walk-in closet, she started with his suits, then his dress shirts, his work shoes and golf clothes, the old ripped jeans he kept around for house chores, the drawers of underwear and socks and winter pajamas.
When she got to the drawer with the soft, heathered t-shirts he used to wear on summer weekends, she took one out, unfolded it and brought it to her face, its texture against her cheek heartbreaking in its familiarity but the scent no longer of him.
She created a separate pile,things to keep.
The plastic surgeon had said not to lift anything heavy, so she carried his things downstairs in small batches and piled them near the back door.
The coat closet was next. His rain trench, his long wool winter coat, a ski jacket and pants, enough windbreakers to outfit a sailing team and, on the floor, the leather duffel he had packed to visit her, the one the police had recovered from the trunk and handed over to her.
She unzipped it and removed the contents—his boxers and white undershirts, a couple of casual t-shirts, the dress shirt he must have brought to wear to dinner.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, the tears welling again.
After bringing everything to the stacks by the back door, she made a cup of tea and took it out to the garden. Peony bushes lined the stone path to the patio, cushions of moss brightening the spaces between the rocks.
She set the mug down and sat at their old teak table.
On summer mornings when he didn’t have to be in court early, they would share coffee and breakfast before he went to his office and she went upstairs to hers. On Sundays they lingered overTheTimes.
She longed to smell the flowers’ delicate aroma now, but the once-fragrant blossoms had withered; it was already late June.
Tears started down her cheeks again. He was just as excited as she was about the Hollinger Fellowship, and although he wanted to have dinner together, he would have understood why she left early and why she was short on the phone. That did not make her a terrible wife.
Harris knew her; he knew how intensely she wrote; he knew how intensely she loved him. One abrupt reaction on her part did not erase what they had shared for so long. Jonathan had voiced what deep down she already knew, but had trouble believing.
She would have to hold on to such fragments of certainty. Maybe these were all she would have, and they would have to be enough.
She would always regret leaving early, that she hadn’t kept their dinner plans. She would always wish she had stayed on the phone longer that Saturday morning. She would always wish they had gotten to say goodbye.
But she would not continue to blame herself or let guilt drive her actions, define her existence.
The light was changing to the golden-green that heralds a heavy rain. The peony bushes rustled in the occasional gust. A few loose, wilted petals floated down to the flagstone, while others caught the breeze and flew.
The sleeves of her robe swayed, and the cooling air bristled the hair on her forearms. Something rustled behind her and she turned to see what it was, but nothing was there except the wind.
Between gusts, the humid air hung moist and heavy on her shoulders, almost as if hands were resting there.
Almost as if.
She touched her shoulder.
She had wished for this ever since it happened—not a vision of him in her dreams or her imagination or her memory, but to sense his presence.
She stayed still and quiet. A raindrop landed on the table. A few plinked the water in the birdbath. One alighted in the crook of her neck right near the spot where he used to kiss her.
“I love you,” she whispered to the air, to him, to the place deep and safe in her heart where he would stay with her forever.
* * *
Jonathan stoppedat the apartment to finish packing and tied up last-minute logistics with Rich in a volley of texts.
On his way out, he took the painting down from the wall in the entry. Wasn’t he on some level doing the same thing as Quinn? Continuing to blame himself by keeping it hanging there, a constant reminder of what he did wrong, of what he lost.
Unlike Quinn, though, losing Delphinewashis fault.
He didn’t know what he would do with the painting yet, so for now he set it against the back wall of the coat closet facing away from the doors. If things had ended differently between them, he might ask her if she wanted it, but there was no way. Like him, she would no longer see its beauty, only a reminder of their brokenness, of his infidelity.
