He approached carefully.
“Emma.”
I waited.
“I am sorry.”
There was no audience near us.
No Brenda.
No mother.
No dining table.
For once, the words had nowhere to perform.
“I believe you regret it,” I said.
His eyes filled.
“Isn’t that enough?”
I thought about the dinner.
The prenatal vitamins on my phone.
Brenda smiling.
Thomas asking for a divorce as though my life were an inconvenience.
Then I thought about the recording.
Emma always fixes everything.
That sentence had been intended as proof that I would never leave.
Instead, it became the reason I finally did.
“Regret is where your work begins,” I told him.
“It is not where mine ends.”
The divorce was finalized that morning.
Outside the courthouse, sunlight covered the steps.
My father waited by the car.
My mother held a container of soup even though the day was warm.
Amanda handed me a copy of the final order.
