You did it when Ava was born. You do it every single time. Something moved across Malcolm's face that wasn't quite anger and wasn't quite shame. Something in between. Something exposed.
"You don't know what happened in my marriage," he said. His voice had changed. You were there for parts of it, but you don't know what was actually happening inside it. "I know enough." "You know what I chose to tell you.
That's different." He stepped back slightly. The space between them became deliberate. And I need you to be careful right now about the line between being someone who supports me and being someone who has decided they know better than I do what I need. Clare stared at him.
"That's not what I'm doing." "That's how it feels right now." What you're describing as support is me watching you run yourself into the ground again and saying nothing. She said that's not support. "That's just watching."
"And what you're describing as support feels like being told my decisions are wrong." "Your decision to take a second overnight job so you don't have to lean on anyone is wrong." I'm willing to say that out loud. That's he stopped. Started again.
Clare, I asked for 6 weeks to figure out whether this is real. Not for 6 weeks of you rewriting how I make decisions. The words landed. Clare's expression changed. Not hurt.
Exactly. Something more precise than hurt the look of a person who has been told that their honesty came out as an attack and who is now rapidly reassessing how much of the conversation was honest communication and how much was defense. Is that what you think I'm doing? She said. It wasn't really a question.
I think he paused. He was running hot and he knew it. And he had enough self-awareness left to know that running hot was when he made his worst arguments. ""I think we should stop before this gets bigger than it needs to be."" "Fine," she said. "Fine," he said. She picked up her bag.
She left. The door closing behind her wasn't a slam. It was careful and controlled, which somehow made it worse. Malcolm stood in the center of the room alone, breathing, done it again. He had felt the wall coming and he had walked toward it and he had let it close behind him.