Page 110 of Maybe in Another Life

“Hannah,” he pleads.

“OK,” I say, and I start wheeling myself away.

“No!” Gabby says, losing her patience. “She can barely move herself from place to place. Don’t ask her to leave the room.”

“It’s fine, really,” I say, but just as I say it, Mark blurts it out.

“I’m leaving,” he says. He looks at the ground when he says it.

“To go where?” Gabby asks.

“I mean I’m leaving you,” he says.

She goes from confused to stunned, as if she’s been slapped across the face. Her jaw goes slack, her eyes open wide, her head shakes subtly from side to side, as if incapable of processing what she’s hearing.

He fills in the gaps for her. “I’ve met someone. And I believe she is the one for me. And I’m leaving. I’ve left you with everything you two could need. Hannah is taken care of. I’m leaving you the house and most of the furniture. Louis Grant is drafting the paperwork.”

“You called our attorney before you talked to me?”

“I was just asking him for a referral when he explained he could do it himself. I didn’t mean to go behind your back.”

She starts laughing. I knew she was going to start laughing when he said that. I wonder if the second it came out of his mouth, he thought,Oh, crap, I shouldn’t have said that. I want to wheel out of the room very badly, but I also know that my wheelchair squeaks, and we are three people in one room. If one of us leaves, the other two are going to notice. And I’m not even sure they are registering that I’m here. I don’t want to bring attention to the fact that I’m here by not being here anymore.

“You have got to be kidding me,” she says.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “But I’m not. We should talk about this in a few days, when you’ve had time to adjust to the information. I’m truly sorry to hurt you. It was never my intention. But I am in love with someone else, and it no longer seems fair to keep going the way we have been.”

“What am I missing?” she asks. “We were talking about having a baby.”

Mark shakes his head. “That was a... that was wrong of me. I was... pretending to be someone I’m not. I have made mistakes, Gabrielle, and I am now trying to fix them.”

“Leaving me is fixing your mistakes?”

“I think we should talk about this at a later date. For now, I have moved my clothes and other things to my new place.”

“Did you take my dining-room table?”

“I wanted to make sure you and Hannah had what you needed, so I took the table to my new home and bought you both a table that would work better for Hannah’s situation.”

“She’s not an invalid, Mark. She’s going to be walking eventually. I want my table back.”

“I did what I thought was best. I think I should go now.”

She stares at him for what feels like hours but is probably only thirty seconds. And then she erupts like I have never seen her before.

“Get out of my house!” she screams. “Get out of here! Get away from me!”

He heads for the door.

“I never should have married you,” she says, and you can tell she means it. She deeply, deeply means it. She doesn’t say it as if it’s just occurring to her or as if she wants to hurt his feelings. She says it as if she is heartbroken that her worst fears came true right in front of her very eyes.

He doesn’t look back at her. He just walks out the door, leaving it open behind him. It strikes me as cruel, that small gesture. He could have shut the door behind him. It’s almost instinctual, isn’t it? To shut the door behind you? But he didn’t. He let it hang open, forcing her to close it.

But she doesn’t. Instead, she crumples to the ground, yelling from the base of her lungs. It’s throaty and deep, a grunt more than a scream. “I hate you!”

And then she looks up at me, remembering that I am here.

She gathers herself as best she can, but I wouldn’t say she succeeds. Tears are falling down her face, her nose is running, her mouth is open and overflowing. “Will you get his key?” she says. She whispers it, but even in attempting to whisper, she cannot control the edges of her voice.

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