For the first time all week, somebody had heard one of Kayla’s boundaries and simply said okay.
I think that moment mattered more to Kayla than either of us fully articulated in the car afterward, though I understood it more clearly once we’d had our conversation on the drive home. Renee hadn’t demanded an explanation for a rule that cost her nothing to honor. She hadn’t turned a simple request into a referendum on trust or character. She’d just agreed. I don’t think Kayla had experienced that particular kind of unremarkable respect in longer than either of us realized.
On the drive home, Kayla sat beside me with the room listing still open on her phone. Andrew hadn’t come. That had been my decision. This conversation belonged to us.
We made it halfway home before I asked the question I’d been avoiding.
“Why did you need Andrew to fail?”
Kayla kept looking through the windshield. “I didn’t.”
“Then why wasn’t it enough when I asked you to stop?”
She locked her phone. For several blocks, she said nothing. Then she whispered, “Because Eric didn’t cheat on me.”
I glanced at her. “What?”
“He didn’t cheat.” Her thumb rubbed the dark screen. “He didn’t hit me. He didn’t steal from me. There wasn’t another woman.”
I slowed at a red light. “Then what happened?”
Kayla gave me the answer as though she still hated how little space it took up.
“He said he didn’t want our life anymore.”
The light changed. I didn’t move until the driver behind me tapped his horn.
Kayla looked out the side window. “Six years, Amanda. And that was it.”
I drove. No advice. No defense of Eric. No attempt to make the sentence less ugly.
Then Kayla said, “I kept waiting to find out what he’d done.”
“And he hadn’t?”
“No.” Her voice dropped. “I just wanted there to be a reason.”
