I felt as if someone had reached into my chest and gripped my heart.
I turned back to Sophie.
“How long have you been coming here alone?”
She swallowed.
“Since January.”
January.
Months.
Not weeks.
Months.
I thought of all the evenings I’d stayed late at the office. All the texts from her that I answered with one-word replies. All the nights she sat across from me at dinner, quieter than usual, while I assumed she was simply lost in the same grief that had swallowed us both.
I thought of the day she packed her clothes.
How calmly she folded each sweater.
How she paused at the bedroom door and looked around as if memorizing the place.
I had thought she was accepting the end of us.
Now I wondered if she had been saying goodbye to more than our marriage.
“Sophie,” I said, my voice breaking, “why would you go through this alone?”
