sorry now.”
“I deserve that.” I replied, “I don’t care what you deserve.” He waited, and I said, “I care what I deserve.” Those words were the first since Thursday that felt entirely mine. He left.
The next week brought paperwork, silence, and grief triggered by ordinary things. I changed the sheets, not because I knew he’d taken Laura to our bed—he denied it—but because they smelled like life before Thursday. I boxed his toiletries and cried twenty minutes over a sock beneath the dresser. Grief ignored the obvious and
