Just a package.
Inside was the board game.
I stared at it for a long time.
Then I laughed.
Not bitterly.
Just because life sometimes has a sense of irony too obvious to ignore.
I almost called her.
Instead, I opened the box.
She had sorted every piece.
The bent cards had been replaced.
Everything sat in small labeled bags.
On top of the board was one handwritten note.
It was never the game. I understand now.
I read the sentence twice.
Then I put the note back.
That evening Steven came over.
He saw the box.
“You kept that?”
“Apparently.”
“You want to play?”
I looked at him.
He started laughing.
“Too soon?”
“It’s been a year.”
“So?”
I smiled.
“Fine.”
We ordered pizza.
His wife joined us.
Two neighbors came downstairs.
We opened the game.
For the first fifteen minutes, I felt strange.
The dice sounded exactly the same.
The cards looked nearly identical.
Someone accused Steven of cheating.
Then something changed.
I stopped remembering Rachel’s lap.
The game became a game again.
That mattered.
Trauma has a way of claiming ordinary objects.
Rooms.
Songs.
Restaurants.
Board games.
Sometimes healing means taking them back.
Not dramatically.
Just through ordinary use.
Years passed.
I dated occasionally.
The first relationship after Rachel lasted three months.
The woman was kind, funny, and completely wrong for me.
The second lasted almost a year.
Neither ended because of jealousy.
That surprised me.
For months after the divorce, I feared I would become the kind of man who monitored every male friend around the woman he dated.
I did not.
If anything, what happened taught me the difference between insecurity and boundaries.
I did not need to forbid another woman from having male friends.
I needed to trust myself enough to speak when something crossed a line.
And if the line was repeatedly mocked, I needed to leave earlier.
That was different from control.
Years after game night, someone asked me whether I regretted not fighting harder for the marriage.
I thought about that question for almost an entire day.
The answer was no.
I fought for the marriage for years before I realized fighting did not always look like begging someone to stay.
Sometimes the fight is telling the truth about what happened.
Sometimes it is refusing to accept a version of love that requires losing respect for yourself.
Rachel and I had good years.
That matters when I tell the story.
She was not cruel for eight years.
She did not spend our entire marriage secretly plotting against me.
We traveled.
We cared for sick parents.