Chapter 6 - LEARNING TO LET HER WALK AWAY
In June she returned to New York to testify before a grand jury.
Silas was outside the courthouse.
No guards stood around him.
No waiting convoy.
He wore a dark suit and carried coffee.
He saw her and stopped.
He did not approach until she nodded.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi.”
“You look well.”
“You look tired.”
“I am.”
For a moment they were almost themselves.
Then they weren’t.
Silas held out the second coffee.
“Black. One sugar.”
Laurel accepted it.
“You remembered.”
His expression tightened.
“I remembered everything. I just stopped acting like it mattered.”
They walked.
At a corner, Laurel asked, “How’s Celeste?”
“Still furious with me.”
“Good.”
“She says hello.”
“Tell her I miss her.”
“I will.”
They reached a small café.
Silas touched the velvet box in his coat pocket but did not remove it.
He had carried Laurel’s wedding ring for six months.
Every therapist, attorney, friend, and well-meaning relative had told him some variation of the same thing.
Give it back.
Make a gesture.
Show her.
But Silas was finally learning that not every object needed to become a weapon in a man’s campaign to be forgiven.
So the ring stayed in his pocket.
They talked for forty minutes.
Ordinary things.
Molly’s impossible vegetable garden.
Celeste’s blood pressure.
The foundation.
Then Laurel asked the question he had feared.
“Are you hoping I come back?”
Silas looked at his coffee.
“Yes.”
She was silent.
“But I don’t think hoping gives me the right to ask.”
Laurel studied him.
“Do you still love me?”
“Yes.”
“That isn’t enough.”
“I know.”
She almost told him not to say that again.
Instead she asked, “Do you understand what I mean?”
Silas thought before answering.
“I think I do now.”
“What do I mean?”
“You loved me when loving me was expensive.”
She waited.
“I loved you when loving you was convenient.”
Her eyes filled.
Silas continued quietly.
“I thought providing a house, security, money, whatever you wanted—that was love. I didn’t understand that you were asking to be heard.”
“You understood.”
Silas looked at her.
“You just didn’t think there would be consequences for ignoring me.”
He nodded.
“That’s probably true.”
There it was.
Not romance.
Not poetry.
Truth.
It hurt more cleanly.
When Laurel stood to leave, Silas did not ask when he could see her again.
Outside the café, she surprised both of them.
“Silas.”
He turned.
“You can call me sometime.”
Hope crossed his face so quickly she almost regretted it.
“Not every day.”
He nodded.
“Not every day.”
“And if I don’t answer—”
“You don’t answer.”
“Yes.”
He smiled faintly.
“I’m learning.”
“Slowly.”
“I was never known for humility.”
“No,” Laurel said. “You were known for the exact opposite.”
She walked away.
He let her.
By autumn, they spoke once or twice a week.
Sometimes for three minutes.
Sometimes an hour.
Laurel never returned to New York permanently.
Silas never asked her to.
He sold the mansion.
When she heard, she called him.
“You sold the house?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Silas was quiet.
“Because it became a monument to a life I was pretending was successful.”
Laurel sat on the porch of her cottage, watching orange leaves move across the lawn.
“I loved that house once.”
“I know.”
“No,” she said. “I loved what I believed we were building inside it.”
Silas absorbed that.
“You always were better with words.”
“I was better with numbers.”
“You were better with truth.”
She didn’t know what to say to that.
Christmas approached.
One year since the dinner.
Laurel expected the anniversary to feel dramatic.
Instead she woke on December twenty-fourth, made toast, answered emails, drove to the foundation office, argued about a grant application, bought milk, and forgot the date until almost three in the afternoon.
May you like
Life could be cruel that way.
The day that once divided your existence into before and after eventually became a Tuesday when you needed groceries.
