Some people cannot be replaced, only followed, and I have been following her example ever since — attaching myself, from here on, to people and not to positions, to what is loyal and not to what is merely comfortable.

Chapter 13 — The House in Bedford

He still thought it was a tantrum.

He still believed he would come find me in a year and collect his dutiful wife, freshly missing him.

He still did not understand that some women finish grieving a marriage in total silence long before they ever pick up a suitcase.

That last part is the thing I most wish I could explain to the version of myself who spent three summers waiting by a phone.

Spencer’s whole theory of me depended on a single false assumption: that my leaving, if it ever came, would be loud — a scene, an ultimatum, a slammed door he would have ample warning to talk his way back through.