Not gone.
Just less common.
One afternoon, after a follow-up appointment, we sat in my car in the parking lot with the windows slightly open.
The air smelled like rain hitting hot pavement.
She held the appointment sheet in her lap.
Then she said, “I don’t want to go back to what we were.”
My stomach tightened.
“Neither do I.”
She looked at me.
“I mean that.”
“So do I.”
“The old marriage was lonely.”
“I know.”
“If there is ever anything again, it cannot be built on silence.”
I nodded.
“It won’t be.”
She gave me a cautious look.
“You say that like promises are easy now.”
“No,” I said. “I say it because I know they aren’t.”
For a while, she watched the first drops of rain speckle the windshield.
Then she reached over and adjusted the vent on my side because she knew cold air bothered my shoulder.
The gesture was so familiar that I had to look away.
Not because it hurt.
Because it felt like being trusted with something small, and small things had always been where Emily kept her love.
Two months after my divorce, I found my ex-wife sitting by herself in a hospital corridor.
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