Almost.
“So what happens now?” I asked.
He rubbed his hands together.
“I don’t know.”
Then he looked at me.
And there it was.
The expression I had known would eventually come.
Not love.
Fear.
The realization that the bridge behind him had already burned while the bridge in front of him had never existed.
“Maya, I think I made everything happen too fast.”
I stayed very still.
He continued.
“I was confused. I got caught up in what Claire represented. Our history. Who I was back then.”
“And now?”
“I don’t know.”
“You keep saying that.”
“I know.”
He swallowed hard.
“Maybe we should pause the divorce.”
“No.”
The word came out so naturally that neither of us moved for a second.
Daniel stared at me.
“You don’t even want to think about it?”
“I have thought about it every single day since you asked for the divorce.”
“Maya—”
“You didn’t leave me for Claire.”
He frowned.
“You left me for the possibility of Claire.”
Daniel looked down.
“That matters.”
“I know I hurt you.”
“This is bigger than hurt.”
I leaned forward.
“You looked at our marriage, our daughter, our home, everything we had built together, and decided all of it was worth risking because somebody from your past became available. The fact that she didn’t choose you doesn’t suddenly make me your choice again.”
His eyes filled with tears.
During our entire marriage, I had only seen Daniel cry twice.
At his grandfather’s funeral.
And the day Emma was born.
Seeing him cry now didn’t make me feel powerful.
It made me sad.
Because there was still a version of us I had loved deeply.
But loving what once existed wasn’t the same thing as agreeing to live inside what our marriage had become.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“I believe you.”
That seemed to hurt him even more.
The divorce continued.
Not viciously.
But not perfectly either.
We argued about holidays.
Daniel wanted flexibility.
I wanted schedules Emma could understand.
We disagreed about the house.
Eventually, we sold it because neither of us could afford the emotional cost of keeping it, even more than the financial one.
Emma and I moved into a two-bedroom townhouse close to her kindergarten.
The first time we toured it, she ran upstairs and immediately claimed the smaller bedroom because it had a window seat.
“Can I make this my reading cave?”
“You can make it whatever you want.”
She chose yellow walls.
Very yellow.
The kind of yellow that looks cheerful for ten minutes and slightly radioactive by sunset.
I let her have it.
My bedroom was smaller than the one I had shared with Daniel.
The kitchen cabinets were plain.
There was no big oak tree in the yard.
But on our first night there, Emma and I sat on the living-room floor eating takeout noodles because the dining table hadn’t arrived yet.
She held one noodle in the air with her chopsticks.
“Our new house feels tiny.”
My heart tightened.
Then she smiled.
“But cozy tiny.”
I laughed.
“Yeah. Cozy tiny.”
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