Chapter 3: What the Phone Said
The three words were: *Miss you already.*
I stood there holding his phone.
The name above the message was Dana.
Barrett was on his feet before I could process it.
His hand came out.
"Give me that."
"Who is Dana?"
"Give me the phone, Renee."
"Answer the question."
He took a breath through his nose.
His jaw was tight.
"She's a colleague.
It's nothing."
"A colleague who misses you." I set the phone down on the counter, face up, between us.
"Already.
While you're still standing in your own kitchen."
He didn't reach for it.
"How long?" I said.
"Renee—"
"How long, Barrett?"
He looked at the candles on the table.
At the single glass of wine.
Something moved across his face — not guilt, not exactly.
More like calculation.
"You're overreacting," he said.
"You've been emotional lately.
The menopause—"
"Don't." My voice came out quiet and very steady.
"Don't use that word to explain away what I'm holding in my hand."
"I'm not explaining anything away.
I'm saying you're reading into a text message."
"I'm reading the text message," I said.
"Exactly as it was written."
He pulled out the chair again and sat down.
He folded his hands on the table the way he did in meetings, when he was managing someone.
I'd watched him do it for twenty-seven years and never recognized it for what it was until that moment.
"We've been having some problems," he said.
"You know that.
Things between us haven't been—"
"Good," I said.
"Say that part out loud.
Say what you've done to make things difficult between us."
"It goes both ways."
"Does it." I picked up my wine glass.
"Tell me my half."
He was quiet.
"You've spent a year telling me I'm too old," I said.
"Too changed.
Too much to look at.
And the whole time—" I stopped.
I needed a second.
"The whole time, you were measuring me against someone else."
"That is not what happened."
"Then tell me what happened."
His phone buzzed again on the counter.
We both looked at it.
Neither of us moved.
"I think you should sleep in the guest room tonight," I said.
"Renee, this is—"
"I'm not asking." I blew out the candle closest to me.
"I'm telling you."
He stood slowly.
He picked up his phone without looking at the screen.
He walked toward the hallway and stopped at the edge of the kitchen.
"We'll talk about this when you've calmed down," he said.
I blew out the second candle.
"I am calm," I said.
"That's what should worry you."
He left the room.
I heard the guest room door close at the end of the hall.
I sat down at the table in the near-dark, the single glass of wine in front of me, and I thought about the word *already.* Already.
As if leaving the house that morning had been a small separation to survive.
As if coming home to me was the interruption.
I didn't cry.
I was surprised by that.
I opened my own phone and typed a name into the search bar — not Dana's name.
A name I hadn't thought about in eleven years.
My college friend Petra, who was now a family law attorney in the city.
I didn't call her yet.
I just found the number and saved it.
Then I went to bed.
Alone.
In the room I had shared with Barrett for twenty-four of our twenty-seven years.
May you like
I lay in the dark and listened to the house.
From down the hall, I heard him typing.
