Page 19 of Out of the Cold

They hadn’t seen each other since he’d moved out of the apartment and headed to Washington for a job at another university. She’d spoken to him only once since then, when they discussed shipping the furniture he’d left behind for her to use. All other communication was conducted through email.

She briefly considered sending him to voicemail, but curiosity got the better of her.

“Hello?”

“Hi Lucy. Sorry to bother you.” His voice cracked, as if he was nervous, too. “How are you?”

“I’m fine, thanks.”

He cleared his throat. “Your new Triple A card came, and I wanted to send it to you. Are you at your parents’?”

He was still kind. Somehow he’d managed to leave her without ever saying anything mean or raising his voice. She still didn’t understand what had gone wrong.

“No, I’m at Len’s cabin. I can give you my post office box.”

“Wow, really?”

“His family isn’t using it, so he offered it to me.”

“That’s great,” he said, sounding doubtful.

She dug the paperwork out of her purse and read him her address.

“I was sure you’d go back to Florida,” he said.

She couldn’t bring herself to admit she was planning to. “Can I ask you something?” she said instead.

“Anything.”

“Why did you break up with me?”

“Lucy...”

“I need to understand. I know things weren’t perfect, but we never fought, and I don’t know...I thought we were sort of happy.”

“We were, for the most part. But we hadn’t been together very long when I realized...” He sighed and went quiet.

“Tell me.”

“I thought you were wonderful. I still do. But after we started living together, I realized I didn’t have a partner. I need to be with someone who can share the burden, but instead I felt like I was the only grown-up. You never stepped up and sorted anything out.”

“But we each had our thing, right? All couples do that. One person does most of the cooking, the other person does the yard work. That kind of thing.”

He sighed, and she could almost see him running his hand through his hair the way he did when he wasn’t sure how to explain himself. “Sure, yes. But I took care of all the boring, mundane things so you could live in your imaginary world.”

“I thought you liked taking care of those sorts of things.”

“No onelikescalling their internet provider or their insurance agent. You do it because it has to be done.”

“But you never said anything.”

“Of course I did. I tried to, anyway, but you didn’t pay attention, or you forgot what I asked. It was easier to do things myself.”

“While I hid away and wrote my book,” she said, her whole body cringing at the thought.

“It’s a great book, and I’m glad I made it easier for you to write. You deserve someone who’ll take care of you, but I realized it couldn’t be me.”

His words knocked the breath out of her. In all the years of hospitals and paper gowns and lying on exam tables, she’d never felt so exposed.

---