“I almost threw it away.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I don’t know.”
I stood.
Then I walked toward the shelf.
The box felt lighter than I remembered.
The last time I touched it, my hands had been shaking.
I carried it to the dining table.
Rachel watched.
I opened the lid.
The pieces were still scattered exactly where I had swept them.
Cards were bent.
Dice sat beneath the folded board.
Plastic houses mixed with fake money.
Rachel looked inside.
“I’m sorry.”
I believed her.
Completely.
That was the strange part.
I believed she regretted everything.
I believed game night was probably the first physical kiss.
I believed she wished she could erase it.
I believed therapy had shown her things about herself she did not like.
But regret has one limitation.
It cannot travel backward.
I closed the box.
Rachel wiped her cheeks.
“Are you taking it?”
I thought for a moment.
“No.”
“Why?”
I pushed it toward her.
“Because it was never the game.”
Her face crumpled.
I picked up my coat.
At the door, Rachel spoke.
“Do you think you’ll ever forgive me?”
I turned.
For several seconds, I considered the safe answer.
Maybe someday.
I hope so.
I’m trying.
Then I decided she deserved the truth.
“I think I already have.”
Rachel stared at me.
“What?”
“I forgive you.”
Hope appeared automatically.
I continued.
“That doesn’t mean I can stay married to you.”
The hope disappeared.
She nodded.
That was the moment I understood forgiveness and reconciliation were not the same thing.
Forgiveness meant I no longer needed Rachel to suffer forever because I had suffered.
Reconciliation would have required me to choose the marriage again.
I could not.
I opened the door.
This time she did not follow me.
Behind me remained an apartment full of the life we had built.
A dining table.
Wedding photographs.
Books.
Furniture we argued about buying.
The board-game box.
And a woman I still loved sitting alone beside it.
Our divorce took about seven months.
It was remarkably quiet.
We had no children and no major property dispute, which removed some of the ugliest possibilities.
Rachel stayed in the apartment until the lease ended.
I kept my retirement account and my small consulting business.
We split savings almost evenly.
There were moments of disagreement, but neither of us tried to punish the other financially.
Cole disappeared from our shared social world almost immediately.