Pancakes I'd ordered out of habit and wouldn't finish. I pushed them around the plate while David watched with the patience of someone who'd spent three months watching me not eat. Sandra said the final documents are ready. I said, "The divorce is final. Officially final as of February 1st.
I'm technically single again. " I tried the word out. Felt it sit wrong in my mouth. Single. After 12 years of being half of a couple, I'm just me. Unattached, alone.
You're not alone. You have friends, family, a whole support network of people who I know and I'm grateful. But it's not the same as having a person, someone who knows all your stories, who understands your weird habits, who can finish your sentences. I set down my fork. I lost more than a wife.
David, I lost my witness. The person who could verify my memories, who could confirm that yes, that thing happened. Yes, that that's what we said. Yes, we really did promise forever. Rachel was a liar and a thief.
Not much of a witness, but she was my liar and thief. She was the person I'd built 12 years of history with. And now all that history is what? Contaminated, unreliable. How much of our marriage was real?
And how much was performance? I don't even know anymore. David reached across the table, gripped my hand. The love you felt was real. Maybe hers wasn't.
Or maybe it was real, and she destroyed it anyway. But your love, your commitment, your effort, that was all real. Don't let her betrayal make you doubt yourself. I wanted to believe that. Wanted to think that my half of the marriage had value even if hers didn't.
But it was hard to trust my own memories when the person who shared them had rewritten the whole story. What happened with the HR investigation? David asked, changing the subject. They fired both of them, Rachel and Marcus. Time sheet fraud plus ethics violations.
It was in the company memo last month. How do you know? You don't work there. Sarah forwarded it to me. She thought I'd want to know.
I picked up my pancakes. Marcus moved to Seattle, apparently. Took a job with a tech startup starting over. Rachel's still here living with her parents, working temp jobs while she figures out what's next. Have you seen her?
Once at the grocery store, we made eye contact across the produce section, and I watched her decide whether to approach me. She didn't just turned around and walk the other way. How did that feel? Like seeing a ghost, like encountering someone who used to matter, who used to be central to my life, and realizing they're just another person now, a stranger who happens to know where I'm ticklish and how I take my coffee. We sat in silence for a while.