He looked at the window.

“I wasn’t sure.”

“Then why say without conditions?”

He did not answer immediately.

I sat down because my knees felt unsteady.

I wanted him to say he had made the inquiry earlier and no longer needed it.

I wanted a date, a follow-up, or a simple admission that he had been unable to make the promise he made.

Instead, he said he was protecting himself from being trapped in a household he hadn’t agreed to.