Chapter 6: The Ride Home Nobody Talks About
Daniel drove.
That was the first mistake.
I should have called a car.
But I got in because twenty-two people were watching from the restaurant window and I did not want to have that conversation on a parking lot curb with my in-laws as the audience.
We made it four blocks before he spoke.
"I know how this looks."
I watched the streetlights pass.
"Olivia.
I need you to let me explain."
"You explained," I said.
"In there."
"That wasn't explaining, that was — Dad was controlling the whole conversation.
I didn't have a chance to say anything the way I would have said it."
"How would you have said it differently?"
He exhaled.
"I would have come to you first.
Before any of this."
"You had four years."
"I know." His hands moved on the wheel.
"I know that.
But I want you to understand why it happened.
The situation with — it wasn't something I planned.
It started before we were married, actually, and I thought it was finished and then it—"
"Before we were married."
He heard the shift in my voice.
Paused.
"How far before," I said.
"Olivia—"
"How far before we were married, Daniel."
The traffic light ahead turned red.
He stopped.
His hands stayed on the wheel at ten and two, like a driving test.
"About two years," he said.
I counted backward.
Two years before we married meant the year we got together.
The beginning.
The candlelit beginning, the long walks, the first Christmas, the proposal on the bridge he knew I loved.
"So the whole time," I said.
"No.
Not the whole time.
There were long gaps.
Months when it was completely—"
"But she was there.
For the whole time we've been together, she was in the background somewhere."
He didn't answer.
The light turned green.
"The money," I said.
"When did you start using my money for it?"
"It wasn't — I didn't think of it as your money specifically.
It was our money—"
"It wasn't our money.
My name is the only name on that account.
You have your account and you have access to mine because I trusted you and you spent seven years proving that was a mistake."
He flinched.
I watched him flinch and I felt nothing in particular about it.
"I was going to end it for good," he said.
"I was working up to telling you everything.
Tonight was actually — I had planned to tell you this week, before Dad's birthday, and then when you sent him that letter—"
"Don't," I said.
"I'm just saying the timing—"
"Don't make this about my letter," I said.
"I sent your father a letter because I was exhausted and I needed one person in that family to understand what I had been carrying.
I did not send it to start a war.
I sent it because I had run out of other options." I looked at him.
"That is what happens when a person runs out of options.
They start asking for help from whoever is left."
He turned onto our street.
"What are you going to do?" he asked.
The question again.
The real one.
"I'm going to call Katherine Moss tomorrow morning," I said.
His hands tightened on the wheel.
"Olivia.
She's a divorce attorney."
"I know what she is."
"Calling her doesn't mean you've decided anything.
You don't have to—"
"I know that too."
He pulled into the driveway.
Cut the engine.
We sat in the dark for a moment, the car ticking as it cooled.
"I love you," he said.
And the terrible thing, the thing I had not prepared for, was that I believed him.
I believed he meant it in whatever diminished, hollowed-out way he was capable of meaning it.
"I know," I said.
I got out of the car.
I went inside.
I did not wait for him in the hallway the way I normally would have.
I went directly to the kitchen, filled a glass of water, and stood at the window looking at the neighbor's light across the garden.
My phone vibrated in my pocket.
Not Daniel.
He was still in the driveway.
It was a number I didn't recognize.
A text message.
Three words.
*We need to talk.*
I stared at it.
Then I looked out at the driveway.
May you like
At Daniel's silhouette behind the windshield, still sitting, head bowed.
There was only one person that message could be from.
