I read it three times.
Jessica hadn’t been preparing to abandon our marriage.
She’d been preparing to return to it.
She wanted us to try again.
And I’d spent the first two days after her disappearance wondering whether she’d run away with Richard.
I remembered her standing in our hotel doorway, waiting for me to say something.
I could have asked her to stay.
I could have told her I loved her.
Instead, I’d said, “Fine.”
I couldn’t change that moment.
For a long time, I sat holding her phone, crying over the conversation we’d never have.
Several weeks later, I finally unpacked our vacation suitcase.
At the bottom, I found the printed photograph we’d taken on the beach.
Jessica was smiling, her head resting against my shoulder.
I remembered what she’d said.
“I want to remember us like this.”
I’d assumed she meant the happiness we’d already found.
Now I understood she’d been holding on to the hope of what we could still become.
