I think back on the past few weeks and a chill slowly twists itself through my body.
The hours he goes missing. The sudden secretiveness of his phone. The hushed conversations, the distance he’s put between us. The fights we have that start over nothing and the more than willingness on his part to sleep on the couch. My stomach hits the floor, my knees wobbling.
“Ty?” I ask, my voice shaking. “What did you do with that money?”
“It’s none of your damn business.” Although his eyes blaze, his tone is more uncertain now as the words drop, weighted with insinuations.
He stands, babying the leg that was hurt when a wall burst in the mine and snapped his fibula. He hasn’t been the same since—physically or mentally. It’s put a strain on our marriage as I’ve tried to keep up with him emotionally and financially.
“Ty?” I choke out.
He seems to understand my suggestion without me saying it, and I’m glad. I don’t think I could ask him out loud if he was planning on leaving me, if he had another woman somewhere waiting on him. I couldn’t handle that. I don’t care how bad things have been. I can’t stomach an affair. The thought alone sends bitter bile creeping up my throat.
“If that’s true,” I say, squeezing the words past the lump in my throat,“then get out.”
“Oh, you’re throwing me out now?” he asks, his voice rising. “Is that how it works?”
“Were you fucking around on me?” I cry.
“Was I fucking around on you?” he huffs. “Are you serious? What, you think maybe I wanted to have sex that wasn’t dictated by a calendar and thermometer?”
The laugh in his tone, the mockery he’s making of our attempt to have a baby incites me.
“Fuck you,” I say.
“I’d love to, but we haven’t checked the date yet,” he says, amping himself up.
“How dare you! How dare you throw that in my face!” I shout, tears stinging my eyes.
“A spade’s a spade, E.”
My face heats, my cheeks scalding as the tears wash over them. “Are you cheating on me?”
“Elin . . .” he scoffs, like my name is dirty coming out of his mouth.
“Are you?”
“You want me to? Would that make this all so much easier for you? You can hate me and feel good about blaming everything on me.”
“Yeah, I want you to. Of course I do.” I roll my eyes. “I’m so sick of this, Ty.”
“Not as sick of it as me.”
“Then go.”
He storms by, taking a wide circle so we don’t accidentally touch, so I can’t reach out and grab his arm. My jaw slams against the hardwood, words begging to be spoken, but I can’t find them. I can only watch his back flex under his shirt as he walks out of my life, the door squeaking behind him.
A full-body shiver yanks me back to reality, to a kitchen that lacks the smell of his coffee or the sound of the television in the other room. With a lump in my throat, I head into the living room. Grabbing a pillow off the sofa and pressing it to my chest, I fight back the sorrow by setting my jaw and grasping for the anger lurking just beneath the surface.
“It’s just because I saw him. That’s it. Don’t let this spiral, Elin,” I say aloud. I miss him. My God, I miss him. Tears stream, an endless testament to the emotion, the dreams, the rejection, the failure, that swirl inside my soul.
Maybe that’s why he was eager to leave. Maybe that’s why it just took a simple shot from me to go, and he hauled ass out the door. Maybe it’s because after all these years, he realizes what a joke I am of a woman, one that can’t conceive. With me, he can’t play catch in the backyard with a little boy that looks like him or tuck a little girl into bed that looks like me. There’s no hope for any of that with me, and that’s the most humiliating thing anyone can ever experience.
Yet, here I sit, spewing hate his way, secretly wanting him to return. My words say how horrible he was for not being there for me, and that’s true, but my heart misses finding the rhythm of his in the middle of the night.
“I can’t do this,” I sputter, throwing the pillow across the room. It lands at the foot of the entertainment center, brushing against it just hard enough to rattle off a metal figurine in the shape of a coal bucket Ty’s grandpa gave him right before he died—one miner to another. I watch it freefall to the floor, almost in slow motion. It falls end over end, twisting and turning in the air before it lands solidly on the carpet.
I know what I have to do. Or, rather, what I can’t do anymore. The end of a journey of my own.
Racing to the garage, maneuvering the house by memory because I can’t see through the tears stinging my eyes, I grab a box. Coming in just as quickly, I start picking up what’s left of Ty’s belongings and shoving them inside. I don’t think about it. I focus on the fact that I can’t live in this perpetual state of uncertainty anymore. I can’t live loving a man that doesn’t want me, in a situation in which I’m doomed to fail. It’s time to accept reality.