Original fiction · AI-generated illustrations
Part 2 — Learning to ask my own questions
Noah listened while I talked in circles. He did not insult her or tell me I should have left years earlier. He asked one useful question.
“What do you need to know before you make any decisions?”
I found a notebook and started a list. Housing. Savings. The joint account. The pension documents I had never bothered to read. My work, which I had reduced when her travel became constant and somebody needed to keep our household running.
I arranged independent advice and gathered records. The picture that emerged was not simple, but it was understandable. That mattered. For years, I had let her make complicated things sound like territory I could not enter.
When I asked for missing statements, she said I was becoming suspicious.
“When you ask questions, it’s planning,” I replied. “When I ask them, why is it suspicion?”
She had no quick answer.
We continued living in separate rooms while we worked through the arrangements. Some evenings were painfully ordinary. We still needed milk. A pipe under the sink still leaked. Ending a marriage did not spare us from discussing whose turn it was to meet the plumber.
I began walking before work. At first, I went only around the block. Later, I found a park I had passed for years without entering. I bought coffee there on Saturdays and learned the name of the woman who ran the kiosk.
These were not grand acts of independence. They were small decisions made without rehearsing how I would justify them.
One afternoon, my wife noticed an apartment listing on the kitchen table. She picked it up, looked at the photograph, and frowned.
