Chapter 5: He Packed His Own Bag
I waited until the kids were asleep.
Nate came downstairs at nine-thirty, reaching for the wine. He stopped when he saw the dining table.
It was all there, neatly, the way I used to lay out files for clients. The settlement statement with Cash to borrower highlighted in yellow. The Singapore welcome packet, open to the application. A printout of my new account, my name only. My CPA renewal certificate. A letter on Laura Kim’s letterhead.
And the photo of the pill bottle label, printed on plain paper, sitting at the very end.
He looked at the table for a long time. Then he did what he does in meetings when a deal goes sideways. He smiled.
“Hol. Okay. I can see how this looks.”
“Sit down, Nate.”
He sat.
“I’m not going to ask you about the pills,” I said. “I’m not going to ask you who the second adult is. I’ve thought about it for three weeks, and I realized I don’t need you to tell me. Whatever you say, I’ll never know if it’s true. I’m done living on what you say.”
“It’s a form, Holly. The relocation office filled it out wrong. You’re blowing this up over a—”
“Then here’s what’s true,” I said, and my voice didn’t shake once. “The kids aren’t going to Singapore. Their passports are in a box with my name on it. Ninety thousand dollars came out of this house with my signature, and Laura Kim will want to know where it went. I have my own account and my own job, and I start full-time in May.”
He stared at me. I don’t think he’d ever really looked at me before. Not since Ava was born.
“So what is this?” he finally asked. “Are you divorcing me?”
That was the question. Kara asked me the same thing on the phone the next day, and Denise, and my mother-in-law, in a voicemail I never returned.
“I don’t know yet,” I said. “That’s the point, Nate. For nine years, every decision in this house was yours. Where the money went. Where we’d live. Who got told what, and when.” I put my hand flat on the papers. “This one’s mine. And I’m going to take my time.”
He sat there a while longer. Then he picked up the photo of the pill bottle label, looked at it, and set it face down on the table without a word. It was the closest thing to an answer I ever got.
He went to Singapore in March.
Alone, as far as I know. I never asked who used the second bedroom, and he never offered. He calls the kids every Sunday morning, which is Sunday night for him. Laura filed a separation agreement in April. The ninety thousand turned out to be sitting in a brokerage account he’d opened the month after the refinance; half of it is in my name now. Whether it ends in divorce, or something else, is a question I’m allowed to answer slowly.
Kara still thinks I should’ve asked him that first night. Maybe she’s right. Maybe there was a version where an honest conversation saved us. But I keep thinking about who I would’ve been in that conversation: a woman with no money, no job and no idea what she had, asking a man with every card for the truth.
I’d rather have had the cards.
Before he left in March, I watched Nate pack his own suitcase on our bed. He folded his shirts like a crime scene. He forgot his phone charger.
I didn’t check his toiletry bag.
For the first time in twelve years, it wasn’t my job to know what was in it.
