It had been on my mind for ages that I should walk away.
Emma lay in the lukewarm bath, too drained to lift herself out. Ive needed to leave for a long time, she whispered for the hundredth time, as if trying to convince herself or someone else. She knew a few texts had blinked onto her phone, but she didnt want to open them. She could already picture what shed see.
Our story was always a seesaw. We first met at Glastonbury, and it was she who invited me back to her flat for the night, never intending to see me again. The next morning, she found me waiting by the stairwell with a bouquet of wild daisies and realised shed been caught.
She went off to a yearlong research placement in Edinburgh, while I stayed behind, sending her long letters. When her flight home was delayed by five hours, I met her at Heathrow, all pale with nerves and exhaustion, clutching another bunch of daisies. In that moment she figured she wanted children with me.
She returned to work five months after our first child was born; I was at home with the baby because I couldnt find a job. Every half hour I rang her, asking where everything was and whether shed be back soon. My colleagues at the office smiled at the sight of a man looking after his child. Emma didnt smile; she was too busy juggling a toddler on her hip, cooking dinner, doing the laundry, tidying up, and later, pulling a night shift.
She borrowed money to buy their daughter a bicycle, to repair the cottage roof theyd received as a wedding gift, to pay off the car loan for the little hatchback Jack used to do odd jobs until he landed a steady post Emma was a junior researcher, her salary modest, and she never seemed to climb higherperhaps she lacked the knack, or simply the time.
Years passed. She bore a second child, went back to work after six months, leaving the son with his grandmother. By then Jack had scraped together a parttime job shuttling kids to nursery, taking out loans for a new winter coat for his son, paying for Emmas daughters swimming lessons, making soups, and swapping out the water in the vase of daisies.
Jacks work was hit or miss; sometimes he watched telly, most days he drank. In the ninth year of our marriage, an appendicitis landed him in the hospital. The surgeon gently suggested a stint in a rehab clinic, remarking that there was more alcohol in his blood than red cells.
It was Emma who rehearsed a hundred times on the way home, We need to live apart and Lets get a divorce. She grew repulsed by his look, his scent, his touch. The cottage roof rotted again, but she had no desire to repair it; they stopped going there altogether. The daisies wilted quickly because she forgot to change the water.
She fell for another man and cheated on Jack. She could find no fault with himhe still looked at her with the same eyes hed had at the airport, as if afraid shed never return. Yet she craved entirely different eyes. Emma told herself it meant nothing, but it meant one thing: shed long needed to leave. Not for the loverhe was married himself.
One day Emma caught herself wondering how many years shed serve if she committed murder. That was the final drop. She packed the children, the suitcases, and moved into her mothers house. Jack wept constantly, pleading, Dont go. Emma was silent, tears streaming, yet shed never felt so light.
Finally, rising from the cool water, Emma slipped on a fluffy bathrobe and fished her phone from her pocket. Sooner or later shed have to read the messages. After a dozen I love you, Come back, Call me, and Dont leave, Jacks last line appeared: Then Ill go. It was his final message.
