Chapter 4

I went home while he was at work.

Ten o'clock, and the place was quiet.

Sunlight spilled across the rooms. This had once been my safe harbor.

But something in me had changed, and now everything around me felt cold.

I started with the master bedroom.

Four bags of clothes, two boxes of books.

And the cup with the chipped rim, the one he'd said more than once should be thrown out.

I washed it clean, wrapped it in newspaper, set it in a box.

My prenatal checkup schedule was still stuck to the fridge door under a magnet.

I read it through, one line at a time, then peeled it off and dropped it in the trash bag.

I sat on the floor and deleted the eight hundred-some photos of us from my phone, one by one.

Photos from our college days, snapshots of ordinary life.

And the pictures from all the firsts we'd walked through together.

The last photo.

It was us outside the county clerk's office the day we got our license.

He wasn't used to smiling; the corner of his mouth barely lifted.

I stared at it for a moment, then tapped delete.

The screen showed a prompt:

【Deleted photos will be permanently removed after 30 days】.

Thirty days?

I'd probably last a little longer than that.

I went and changed the beneficiary on one of my insurance policies.

The clerk asked who I wanted it changed to.

It had originally been Grant Mason. His career was at its peak now; he wouldn't want that small payout anyway.

I wrote down my mother's name.

I didn't take the marriage certificate.

I slid the documents into an envelope and put a note in with them:

【You've already signed the divorce agreement. I'm leaving you the certificate so it's easier for you to file the paperwork.】

After thinking it over, I added a copy of the induced-labor consent form too.

I knew he'd open this drawer sooner or later. I just didn't want to explain anything ever again.

I set the envelope at the very back of the study drawer, under a few old contracts.

On my way down I passed a stationery store and went in to buy a notebook.

Plain, no pattern, cheap.

On the flyleaf I wrote, stroke by stroke:

【Lend me a little more time, so I can forget you.】

I called it 《The Forgetting Plan》.

I didn't want to carry these ten years of love and pain with me.

Hate takes too much strength, and strength was the one thing I had least of now.

Love was worse. It would leave me aching, watching for something that would never come.

I wanted none of it.

Lately I'd noticed the anemia and the failing body had started to weaken my memory.

Sometimes I couldn't even recall what a nurse had said to me a second ago.

If that was how it was, I might as well go with it and wash away every part that had to do with him.

On the first page I wrote:

【Today, forget how he carried me back to the dorm in the rain in college. Memories are invalid variables. As of today, reset them all to zero.】

Invalid variable was a phrase he liked. I borrowed it.

The things I'd bought for the baby during the pregnancy were in the cabinet in the second bedroom.

Four onesies, six pairs of socks, and some crib bedding.

I'd spent a long time picking them out at the store.

I folded each one, packed them into a carton, and mailed it to a charity.

Some child could always use them.

That afternoon I went to the office to resign.

HR asked me why. I said it was for personal growth.

She clicked a few times in the system.

"Ms. Larson, you've been here more than three years."

"Yeah. More than three years."

My hand shook a little when I signed. She didn't notice.

They didn't know I was Mr. Mason's wife, so of course no one would tell him about one small employee leaving.

I carried the sorted old files from the marketing department over to the administrative storeroom.

The storeroom happened to be the utility closet right next to the CEO's office.

His door was ajar, and Nora Henson's considerate voice drifted out:

"Mr. Mason, your wife hasn't been giving you trouble lately, has she?"

"Pregnant women get moody. Don't take it to heart. Not everyone can stay as level-headed as you all the time."

Secretary Henson never said a single bad word about me, yet she always managed to paint me as an unreasonable nuisance.

Grant's voice came:

"That kind of pointless emotional drain is something she should handle on her own."

I stood outside the door and smiled a little.

Yes. I was handling it.

The baby, the cancer, the marriage, and our ten years. Handling all of it at once.

I transferred some money to my mom with a note: year-end bonus.

She wrote back right away:

【This much? Go easy with it. Don't give it all to me.】

I answered sweetly that I would.

Then I added a neighbor from her community, an older woman, and asked her to look in on my mom now and then.

I only said I was going far away, with no set return date.

I sent her two thousand. She refused for a while before she finally accepted.

My last night in that home.

Grant came back a little after one in the morning. I was already lying down.

He showered, got into bed, and rarely, held me from behind.

He hadn't held me like that in more than half a year.

I guessed it was because I'd been too quiet lately, and he'd sensed something.

Or maybe it was unease at an unknown variable showing up in his control system.

In the dark I lay with my eyes open and asked him one last question:

"Grant, if you could do it all over, would you still marry me?"

He was already half asleep. He grunted something vague:

"Don't dwell on pointless things. Go to sleep."

I lay still in the dark, listening to his breathing.

Even, steady.

Before dawn I slipped my body out from under his arm.

I pulled the packed suitcase along, and the click of the lock latch as the door shut felt like the period at the end of our story.