We had laughed together.
Raised our daughter together.
Buried parents together.
Sat beside each other through flu, job changes, bad plumbing, birthdays, graduations, and Sunday mornings when neither of us wanted to get out of bed.
I couldn’t separate my marriage into true and false columns.
Human lives weren’t accounting sheets.
Unfortunately, the actual accounting sheets were proving much easier to understand.
At twelve seventeen, I finally called Peter.
He answered after four rings.
“Hello?”
His voice was older than I remembered.
“Peter?”
Silence.
Then:
“Emily?”
I sat down.
“Yes.”
Another silence.
“Is Mark all right?”
The question caught me off guard.
“He’s in the hospital.”
“I heard.”
“How?”
“Mark called me yesterday.”
That was the last thing I expected.
