For seven years I had been trying to solve a puzzle that had no clean solution, forever guessing at how much Brandon loved me, forever adjusting my own behavior to earn a little more of it, forever unsure whether the coldness was my fault or his nature or just a rough season we’d get through.

That uncertainty is its own particular torture; it keeps you working, keeps you hoping, keeps you from ever being able to leave, because you can never be quite sure enough that leaving is right.

And in that ultimatum — her or this marriage — Brandon had, at last, resolved the uncertainty completely.

He had told me, in terms too plain to translate, exactly where I stood: that a marriage to me was a thing he would trade, in an instant, the moment it cost him access to something he wanted more.

There was no ambiguity left to work with, nothing left to earn, no season to get through.