I woke before the alarm.
For a moment, I forgot about the conversation in the kitchen.
I lay beneath the blanket, listening to the quiet house and watching the pale light gather around the curtains.
Then I remembered Dererick sitting across from me.
I remembered the way he had looked down at the table when I asked about the gloves.
I remembered him saying he would talk to me about it.
The promise did not come with an explanation.
It came with another stretch of waiting.
I turned toward his side of the bed.
He was awake, staring at the ceiling.
“Morning,” I said.
He turned his head.
“Morning.”
Neither of us mentioned the night before.
We got up and went downstairs.
He made breakfast while I filled a glass of water.
The kitchen looked exactly as it had when we left it.
The dish towel was still folded on the counter.
The chairs remained tucked under the table.
The chipped mug was in the cupboard.
I had begun to think of that mug as a marker between the person I had been before my suspicion and the person I had become afterward.
I wondered whether I would ever see it without remembering the tea.
Dererick set two plates on the table.
“Toast?”
“Yes, please.”
He put two slices on my plate.
I thanked him.
We ate quietly.
I tried to concentrate on the food, but my mind kept returning to the same question.
Would he bring up the conversation?
Would he wait for me to ask again?
Had I made a mistake by asking at all?
I could not answer any of those questions.
Dererick finished eating and wiped his hands with a napkin.
“I have a few things to take care of today,” he said.
“Okay.”
“I might be back a little later than usual.”
“All right.”
He watched me for a moment.
I could tell he was deciding whether to say something else.
I waited.
Instead, he stood and carried his plate to the sink.
The opportunity passed.
I felt a familiar urge to follow him into the kitchen and ask what he had meant by needing time.
I did not.
I was trying to learn the difference between giving someone room and abandoning my own need for an answer.
I was not sure I knew how to do that yet.
After he left, I sat alone at the table.
I could have cleaned up immediately.
Instead, I stayed where I was and let the quiet settle.
The house felt larger when I was alone in it.
Every familiar object seemed to hold a memory of how things had been before I began paying attention.
The chairs reminded me of our breakfasts.
The counter reminded me of the evenings when Dererick made tea.
The sink reminded me of the night I poured mine away.
I did not want to keep turning the house into a record of my fear.
I stood and cleared the plates.
I washed them and dried my hands.
Then I went about the rest of the morning.
I changed the sheets in the spare room.
I folded a basket of laundry.
I answered a message I had left unanswered the day before.
The tasks did not make my thoughts disappear, but they gave the hours a shape.
Around midday, I found myself standing in front of the cupboard again.
I opened it and looked at the chipped mug.
I did not take it down.
I did not close the cupboard immediately, either.
I let myself look at it without imagining what might have happened to the tea.
The mug was just the mug.
My fear was real, but the fear itself was not evidence of what Dererick had done.
I needed to remember that.
I closed the cupboard and went outside for a little while.
The air was warmer than it had been in the morning.
I stood near the doorway and looked at the street.
A neighbor passed by and lifted a hand in greeting.
I waved back.
It was such an ordinary moment that I felt unexpectedly grateful for it.
For those few seconds, I was not a wife trying to understand her husband's behavior.
I was simply a person standing outside her home.
When I went back inside, I made myself lunch.
I ate at the table and read a few pages of the book I had left unfinished.
I even found myself following the story for a while.
Then I noticed how quiet the house had become.
My thoughts returned, but I did not let them take over immediately.
I reminded myself that I had asked a question.
I had not yet received an answer.
Both things could be true without requiring me to decide what came next that very minute.
In the afternoon, I put the notebook back in the drawer after reading the three sentences again.
I did not add anything.
I was tired of trying to make words do the work of a conversation.
When Dererick came home, I heard his keys before I saw him.
He entered the kitchen and placed them in their usual spot.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey.”
He looked tired.
I wondered whether he had spent any of the day thinking about what I had asked.
I did not ask him.
He washed his hands and asked what I had been doing.
“Mostly housework.”
“Productive day.”
“More or less.”
He smiled faintly.
For a moment, we stood across from each other with the counter between us.
I could have mentioned the conversation.
I could have asked whether he was ready to talk.
Instead, I let him put away the things he had brought home.
I was not trying to protect him from the question anymore.
I was trying to choose a moment when I could listen without allowing my fear to answer for me.
We prepared dinner.
He chopped vegetables while I filled a pot.
The familiar rhythm returned, but it did not feel quite the same.
We were both aware of something we had not discussed.
I could feel it in the pauses.
I could see it in the way Dererick occasionally looked toward me and then back at what he was doing.
I wondered whether he felt the same uncertainty I did.
I wondered whether he was frightened of what I might think.
I wondered whether he was simply tired.
I stopped myself there.
I could not know his thoughts by watching his face.
I had tried that for days, and it had only made me more confused.
At dinner, we spoke about ordinary things.
Afterward, I washed the plates.
Dererick dried them and put them away.
When we finished, he remained beside the counter.
“I haven't forgotten what you asked me,” he said.
I looked at him.
“Okay.”
“I know I said I would talk to you.”
“I remember.”
He lowered his eyes briefly.
“I need a little more time.”
I felt the old fear rise.
I wanted to ask why.
I wanted to tell him that time was the one thing I had already given too much of.
But I also knew that demanding an answer in that moment would not guarantee that I received an honest one.
“How much time?” I asked.
He looked up.
“I can't give you an exact answer right now.”
I breathed out slowly.
“That makes it hard for me.”
“I know.”
“I'm not asking because I want to fight with you.”
“I know that, too.”
I studied his face.
He sounded sincere.
I could not use sincerity as proof of anything, but I did not have to reject it simply because I was afraid.
“I just need to understand what I saw,” I said.
He nodded.
“I understand.”
We stood quietly for a moment.
Then he reached for the dish towel and hung it over the oven handle.
I watched him do it.
It was an ordinary gesture, one he had performed countless times.
This time, I let it remain ordinary.
When we went upstairs, I felt disappointed that the conversation had not moved further.
But I also felt different from the woman who had spent the previous nights waiting for him to do something she could interpret.
I had asked.
I had made my need clear.
He had acknowledged it.
That was not the answer I wanted.
It was still more than silence.
I lay down and turned toward the window.
The house settled around us.
I did not know what Dererick would tell me.
I did not know when he would tell me.
For once, I let myself admit both things without inventing an ending to fill the space.
Click here to continue reading: PART 15: I Began to Understand That Waiting for an Answer Was Different From Waiting in the Dark and Hoping Nothing Would Happen
At Two Seventeen, I Watched My Husband Cross Our Bedroom in Gloves, Carrying Something I Had Never Seen Before
Part 14 of 20
