“Not ever in the way you mean.”
His face collapsed a little, and I hated that I still felt the impulse to console him. I kept gripping the doorframe. Sometimes a boundary begins as a physical act.
“Twenty-seven years, Claire.”
“I know exactly how many.”
“You can just walk away?”
I held his gaze. “You already did.”
He departed without another argument.
Six weeks afterward, mediation took place in a plain conference room. Melissa sat beside me; Daniel brought attorney Paul Whitman. A hallway machine dispensed coffee that was brown
