Thanksgiving at Frank’s family home that year produced the moment I would remember as the first clean break in the surface.
Helen asked me across the table, in front of everyone, “Have you thought about getting out before it’s too late?”
The table went briefly quiet. The kind of quiet that happens when people hear something they know they should not have heard, but cannot quite bring themselves to address.
Meaning before children.
Meaning before the marriage calcified into something permanent.
Meaning stop this while you still can, because I have never believed you belong here and I am running out of patience pretending otherwise.
Frank laughed. He called his mother incorrigible, the word landing like a cushion thrown over something sharp, and redirected the conversation to football.
That evening in the car, I brought it up.
I said, “She asked me in front of your entire family whether I was planning to leave.”
Frank said, “She doesn’t mean anything by it. She just worries.”
I said, “About what exactly?”
Frank did not answer. He adjusted the mirror. He changed lanes.
The question sat between us like something neither of us wanted to pick up.