The period at the end of a sentence that had run on far too long. I texted David Rosy's Diner. 9:00 a.m. Then I showered, dressed, and drove through snow quiet streets to meet my best friend for breakfast enclosure. David was already there when I arrived, sitting in a booth by the window, two cups of coffee going cold between his hands.
He looked up when I slid in across from him, studied my face with the practiced eye of someone who'd been watching me barely hold it together for months. "You look better," he said. "I look the same. " "No, you actually look better. Less," he gestured vaguely at my face. Less haunted, less like you're one bad day away from a complete breakdown.
Maybe I already had my breakdown and you missed it. Did you? I thought about it about the nights I'd spent staring at ceiling cracks. The mornings I'd forgotten to eat. The weeks that had blurred together into undifferentiated grief.
I don't know. Maybe. Or maybe I'm still having it. Just very slowly. The waitress came.
Rosie herself, 60s and cigarette voiced and kind. The usual. James. I realized I've been coming here often enough to have a usual. Yeah, thanks, Rosie.
She patted my shoulder. That universal gesture of I heard about your divorce and I'm sorry, then went to put in my order. Everyone in town knows, I said to David. Small towns are like that. Secrets don't last.
He took a sip of coffee. How does it feel being the wronged husband, the sympathetic victim? Exhausting, but satisfying? I considered the question. Over the past 3 months, I'd become a minor celebrity in our social circle.
The man whose wife had betrayed him, who'd responded with calm dignity, who'd emerged from the wreckage with his integrity intact. People bought me drinks, offered sympathy, treated me like I'd survived something heroic. I don't know about satisfying, I said. Finally, validating maybe. Everyone knows the truth now.
Everyone knows what Rachel did, but it doesn't. I stopped, tried to articulate something I've been feeling. It doesn't make me feel better. It just makes me feel confirmed. Like, yes, I was right to be hurt.
Yes, she was wrong, but that confirmation doesn't heal anything. It just makes the wound official. David nodded slowly. Have you heard from her since the settlement? Once she emailed to ask about splitting up the last of our shared possessions, I told her to keep whatever she wanted that I didn't care anymore.
And did you care? No, they're just things. Furniture and kitchen appliances and photos from a life that doesn't exist anymore. She can have all of it. My breakfast arrived.