Page 52 of Not the Plan

“What took so long?”

His sigh was much heavier than the last. “A lot of things.” He studied the passing cars. “Shame. Embarrassment. I fail— IfeltlikeI’d failed.” He needed a moment. He felt her glance at him, but he couldn’t make eye contact. Facing it all inside of himself was tough. The first few appointments with his therapist had been worse. Now, with her, it was taking all his strength.

“We lived in Harrisburg, in Pennsylvania. I was at the senate. I thought things were fine. Until one day I came home from work and she was gone.” He took a breath. “At first I lost it. I thought she’d been kidnapped, or worse. Then it turned out to be the last of her games, her tests of my love that I’d somehow failed. I waited. For months. Like a fool. Then I went home to Michigan.But I’d made a commitment. My vows were serious to me. It took a solid year for my parents to convince me to file. Even though…” He sighed, then swallowed against a dry throat. “The relationship was abusive—had always been abusive. I just didn’t understand it at the time.”

He flinched at her hand on the back of his, resting on his knee. She squeezed.

“I’m so sorry, Karim,” she said.

“Thanks,” he said, squeezing back. She returned her hand to the wheel.

“It’s strange,” she said. “Cruel, almost.”

“What’s that?”

“She left you but didn’t file herself?”

Karim chuckled. “It’s not strange at all if you know anything about Laila. She would expect me to wait for her indefinitely. Like a good little puppy. I was always athingthat belonged to her. I had to act the way she wanted, think the way she wanted, express the feelings that she wanted me to express. Not be a real human being with my own mind. If I were, it was some sort of attack against her.”

Her visible eyebrow shot up again.

“It was like that?” she asked.

“Yeah. Of course it wasn’t like that at first. It…It wasn’t until she was diagnosed after our first few years of marriage that I understood the magnitude of what we were dealing with. I was ready to support her; she was my wife, after all. But when she rejected the diagnosis, refused to follow her therapy plan and stay on her medications, things got a lot harder.”

“Her diagnosis?” Isadora asked. “I mean, maybe you don’t want to go into all of that with me. I don’t mean to overstep.”

“It’s okay,” he said. “She has borderline personality disorder. “It’s…a lot of things, a big diagnosis. But what it meant for us, for me, was an abusive relationship that couldn’t work.”

“Oh,” she said.

They were quiet a moment, the hum of the car on the road filling the space.

“What did she have to say about it?” Isadora asked when she broke the silence. “About leaving?”

“I haven’t heard a word from her since the day before she left.”

Isadora shook her head, then glanced at him again.

“I’m sorry, Karim,” she said.

“Thanks.” He reached over to turn the podcast back on.

“That’s really powerful, you know,” she said.

“Powerful?”

“Yeah. Recognizing the situation for what it was and getting yourself out of it.”

He shook his head.

“I don’t know about powerful. I waited in Harrisburg for a long time. My brother, Khalil, had to kind of come rescue me, get me to come home. It took therapy for me to really see that the situation had been abusive.”

“Well, I’m glad for you that you’re out of it now,” she said, her voice bright. “You seem to be healing.”

“Yeah, I’m getting there. And maybe…”

“Maybe?” she asked.

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