Page 71 of The Space He Left
Jack
When I'd told Harper to take all the time she needed after our talk on Emma' birthday, I hadn't realised it was going to be another year. She had made me work for every inch of ground I'd gained back, and I was grateful for it.?
It had been on Emma's second birthday that Harper had asked me to move back in. I'd still been living above Sam's bar, spending more and more time at the house, but always leaving after Emma’s bedtime. For an entire year, I had maintained the careful, agonizing distance Harper needed to feel safe.
It was the hardest thing I’d ever done. There were a hundred small moments where the old, easy intimacy between us threatened to resurface. I’d see a stray curl fall across her cheek, and my fingers would ache to tuck it behind her ear. We’d be baking cookies with Emma, and I’d have to stop myself from brushing a smudge of flour from her nose. Every single time I left at night, I had to fight the overwhelming urge to just pull her into my arms and hold her.
But there was one thing I never failed to do. As I stood at the door, I’d look her in the eye and say, "Goodnight, Harps. I love you." I didn't ask for anything in return. It was just a fact I needed her to know before I left.
She never said it back. Not once in that whole year. But she never flinched, either. She would just meet my gaze and give a small, almost imperceptible nod. I understood, on a level I hadn't been capable of two years ago, that this had to be on her terms. Her pace. My job wasn't to take what I wanted; it was to earn what I had lost.
But all of that changed on the night of Emma's second birthday.
Harper and I were cleaning up the remains of a successful dinosaur-themed party after Emma was asleep. We moved into the familiar, comfortable silence we’d rebuilt over the past year, stacking paper plates and wiping frosting from the table.
"Jack," she said, her voice quiet in the still house. "I've been thinking."
I stopped wiping the counter, my back still to her, my heart starting to pound. "Yeah?"
"Maybe it's time for you to come home."
I'd nearly dropped the stack of plates I was carrying to the kitchen. "Harper, are you sure?" I’d kicked myself as soon as the words were out of my mouth.
"I'm sure. I want to try. But..." She'd turned to face me, her expression serious. "Separate bedrooms. I need to know I can trust you completely before we... before we're really together again.”
My heart had hammered in my chest, a wild mix of triumph and terror. She was letting me come home. I hadn’t argued. I had just nodded and said, "Whatever you need. I understand."
And I did. This wasn't a punishment; it was a boundary. It was Harper protecting the fragile trust we had so painstakinglyrebuilt over the last year. After a year of family dinners and holiday celebrations navigated as a careful, but still separate, team, she was letting me back into the physical space of our family home. But she wasn't ready to let me back into the most intimate space of our marriage. I hadn't earned that yet.
I would have agreed to sleep in the garage if it meant I could wake up under the same roof as her and Emma. And so the next day, after thanking Sam for a year of shelter, I drove the short distance that felt like the final mile of a marathon.
The guest room was ten feet down the hall from the master bedroom. Ten feet that felt like a hundred miles.
I stood in the doorway, my duffel bag on the floor beside me. The room was clean and impersonal, smelling faintly of the lavender linen spray Harper used. She always sprayed the pillows before we had guests, a small, thoughtful touch that was so quintessentially her. Seeing that she still did it, even for me, was a quiet, painful gift.
This was the room her parents stayed in when they visited, the room where Harper’s friends crashed after a late night of wine and catching up. It had never been my room until now. My home was down the hall. My wife was down the hall. But this was the space I had earned. This was the distance I still had to cross.
I unpacked my bag, arranging my few things in the empty dresser drawers. A stack of t-shirts, a couple of pairs of jeans, my running shoes. It was the spartan collection of a man living a temporary life. I’d spent a year in the small apartment above Sam’s bar, and now I was a guest in my own house.
I could hear the familiar sounds of Harper moving through the evening routine downstairs. The dishwasher humming. I could picture her standing at the sink, rinsing the last of Emma's sippy cups, her brow furrowed in concentration. The low murmur of the TV, probably that British baking show she loved to watch after Emma was down. The click of the locks on thedoors, a sound that used to signal the end of our day together, the moment we were finally alone. Each sound was a stab of nostalgia, a reminder of the life I had so carelessly thrown away.
Later, I heard her footsteps on the stairs. They paused outside my door for a fraction of a second, and my breath caught in my chest. But then they continued down the hall. I heard the soft click of our bedroom door closing.Herbedroom door.
I sat on the edge of the guest bed, the mattress firm and unfamiliar beneath me. The silence of the house was different now. It wasn't the silence of emptiness, but the charged silence of proximity. I was home, but not home. I was with her, but not with her.
I thought about the old Jack. The man from two years ago would have been frustrated by this. He would have seen it as a test to be passed, a hurdle to overcome on the way back to what he wanted. He would have been impatient, maybe even resentful, thinking, I’ve apologized, I’ve done the work, when is it going to be enough?
But sitting here now, I felt none of that. What I felt, overwhelmingly, was gratitude. Not just for the chance, but for the woman Harper had become. The woman who had been broken but had refused to stay shattered. The woman who was now strong enough to set a boundary like this, not out of spite, but out of a fierce self-respect I had forced her to build.
Harper trusted me enough to be vulnerable, to be asleep just ten feet away from me.
My job wasn't to rush her or to prove I was "fixed." My job was to live in this space with her, to show up for breakfast every morning, to help with bath time every night, to be the steady, reliable, and respectful partner she needed. My job was to be so consistently the man she deserved that one day, she might feel safe enough to close that ten-foot distance between our rooms.I wasn't just earning back a wife; I was earning the trust of the incredible woman I was falling in love with all over again.
I turned off the light and lay back on the pillows, staring up at the unfamiliar ceiling. The house was quiet. Down the hall, my wife and my daughter were sleeping safely. My entire world was just on the other side of that wall. And for the first time in a very, very long time, I felt a flicker of peace.
I was being given a chance. And I would not screw it up. This very long game was one I was determined to win. Not by making a grand move, but by patiently, humbly, earning every single inch of ground back. Not just for me. For them. For the family I loved more than my own pride. Starting with these ten feet.
Chapter 26
