He thought a moment. “Take your friend. If she didn’t feel guilty about calling off the wedding the week before the ceremony, she’d save herself a lot of misery. Yeah, it would suck. People have flights and hotel reservations and both parties have put a lot of money into it. But now, what’ll happen is—they’ll get back from their honeymoon, and reality will settle in. Maybe they won’t realize it at first. Maybe they even have a kid or two. Ten years down the line, they’re divorcing, tearing the family apart, fighting each other tooth and nail, taking years off their lives from the stress.”
I nodded along with everything he said. Nathan’s not only smart, but emotionally intelligent. I love that about him. “Or stay together and set a bad example for the kids,” I said, thinking of my own parents. “But I think what you’re talking about is shame. She’d be ashamed to call it off because of how it would look and what it would cost everyone. She wouldn’t necessarily be remorseful.”
“What about you?” he asked. “You claim that you never feel guilty.”
I waggled my eyebrows at him. “And imagine if the rest of the population were like me?”
“The horror.” He reached out and pulled me flat on the bed for a kiss. “Terrifying, really.”
I touched his cheek. “I want to be more like you.”
“How am I?” he whispered.
r /> “I don’t know. But you always get it right. You always know what I need, even if it’s space.”
“Space,” he mused. “That’s something I’ll never give you too much of. Promise me the same?”
I promised, of course. Was I breaking that promise now by not pushing him harder to tell me what was bothering him? Each day I’ve thought about bringing it up, something has stopped me. I’ll wait until the weekend in case it’s a big deal, I’ll think, or, After the holidays. Or, Maybe tomorrow he’ll be different. Then there’s the fact that he’s already hurting over the sudden decline of his dad’s health. I don’t want to needle him.
But this tiny, red-stain of a clue—I’m more worried now than I was.
“You’re quiet over there,” Finn says.
Sweating, I shrug my cardigan off my shoulders and place it on the back of a chair. My tank top sticks to my stomach.
“Hot?” Finn asks.
“Kind of.” There’s another box at my feet, though I don’t remember it being there before. It looks heavy, so I open it on the ground. Carefully, I lift a set of dinner plates onto the counter. “I was thinking about what you said earlier.”
“I’m sorry about the Pinterest joke. I’m not even really sure what that website is . . .”
“Not that,” I say. “I’m not that sensitive. I meant the guilt thing, when you asked how much time I had. What do you feel guilty about?”
He clears his throat. “Oh. You mean . . . right now?”
“In general. What are you holding on to?”
He blows out a sigh that ends in a laugh. “That’s a tough question. If you want to see an American panic, ask them what they did wrong today. Sometimes I’m surprised we aren’t all curled into balls by breakfast time.”
“Interesting. You make it sound like an epidemic.”
“It kind of is, but I’m guilty of it too.” We both laugh. “Guilty of feeling guilt.”
“I don’t feel guilt,” I declare as if I’m on trial. As if I’m trying to convince him. “I don’t have regrets.”
“About anything?” he asks, surprised.
“Pretty much. Most things, I can’t control. And those I can, I always try to make good decisions with the information I have. At least, decisions that work best for me.”
“And your husband.”
I stop rinsing out a bowl. “Well, yes. I mean, what’s best for me is almost always best for Nathan.”
“And if it isn’t?”
I dry the dish and place it on the shelf with the others. Once, a long time ago, I made a decision for Nathan. It hadn’t been easy. Many people would even say it was bad. Wrong. But my life with Nathan is better for it, so how can I feel guilty about that?
I try to think of a choice I’ve made that wasn’t best for Nathan, but I did it anyway. Nathan is the most important thing in my life. Do I know, though, without a shadow of a doubt, that I can and will put him before myself? In an ideal world, the answer is yes. And most of the time I do.
But then, I think about our trouble getting pregnant. Nathan may have been okay with me going back on birth control for now, but that won’t last. He’s prepared to exhaust every option. I know better, though—some people don’t get everything they want. And there has to be a point, when the heartbreak becomes too much, where someone says—enough is enough. A hard decision to make, but one that’s in both our best interests.
“Compromise,” I say. It’s a canned answer, but the alternative is the truth, which is that I don’t know what I’d do if faced with a choice between what’s best for me and what’s best for Nathan.
“Where is he?” Finn asks after a moment.
“Who?” I pick up a heavy serving dish, blow on it, and designate a musty corner cupboard with extra space to be the party platter home.
“Your husband.” He clears his throat. “Where is he?”
“Oh.” With some effort, I slide the large plate into its spot, close the cabinet, and take a breath. “I don’t know. We have a very relaxed—”
“So you’ve said,” he says. “You don’t care where he is?”
I look down at my hands. Finn continues to press an issue I don’t want to think about. I came here to distract myself, not confront demons. I could try and guess where Nathan is, but the point isn’t that he’s not here. It’s why. What’s keeping him away lately? Another woman? Or, worse—me? Except for bowling nights, it takes a lot for him to miss dinner.
“Of course I care,” I say. “But I trust him.”
“I didn’t realize we were talking about trust.”