While Tessa kept talking, Emily wondered if this job made her take herself out of the equation too often, tamp down her own thoughts and feelings and opinions too much. She was always waiting for other people to decide how they felt, giving them space and helping them figure out their own minds, and ignoring her own. She’d been trained to be objective, to be patient, which were good traits in general, but she wondered if sometimes it put her in a strange role in her marriage. The way she’d been trained to interact bled into her relationship with her husband. It created a situation in which Ezra expected her to be a wife who comforted him, and usually she could be. But sometimes, when she was the one who was hurting, she didn’t have the emotional strength to comfort him. She couldn’t be anything more than a wounded woman who needed comforting herself.
29
That night, Emily got home from work and set out all the ingredients for fresh pesto: basil, pine nuts, olive oil, pecorino, garlic, salt, pepper. Even though she still felt raw and wounded, she wanted to make an effort. She looked at the pasta maker, wondering if she had time to hand-make pasta.
It was already six, so she decided to go with boxed fusilli, and put water on the stove to boil. She texted Ezra: Hope your day went well. What time will you be home?
She picked the smallest leaves off the basil so the pesto wouldn’t taste too minty and put them in the mortar and pestle they’d gotten for their wedding.
So sorry, Em. Hala just asked if I could take her call tonight—her brother flew in to surprise her for her birthday. So I said yes. Her night call goes straight into my call tomorrow, so it looks like I’ll be sleeping here tonight. Really sorry. See you tomorrow.
Emily let out a breath, as if she’d actually been punched in the gut. She wanted to talk to him. If he didn’t come home, they couldn’t work through things, get their relationship back on track, back to normal. If he didn’t come home, that gnawing feeling inside her wouldn’t go away, the one that made her feel off kilter, like her life was sliding sideways. Then another text came through: I’m still trying to wrap my mind around everything, still thinking about us. This wasn’t just about him doing a favor for Hala.
Emily stared at the texts. She’d really hurt Ezra—perhaps more than she’d realized. More than he’d hurt her, it seemed. She put the phone’s cursor in the response box. She didn’t particularly want to apologize—and honestly, she wanted him to apologize for not being there for her, for not telling her about Malcolm’s death—but she would if it helped get him home, if it made him process all of this more quickly.
I’m so sorry I hurt you, she wrote. I just never thought those stories about my past would matter. What matters is now, what we have together. The past is the past. I was a different person then.
It felt like that. Like there was one Emily in college, and another one now. There were attributes they shared, but they were two different people. They made different choices, had different passions.
Emily typed again. I love you.
Then she stared at her phone, waiting for those three dots.
He didn’t respond.
Which usually meant that some code had gone off in the hospital and he was rushing to a patient’s bedside. But she wondered now if that was actually the truth.
30
Emily wasn’t particularly hungry after that exchange, so she turned off the boiling water and abandoned her pesto preparation. Instead of eating dinner, she poured herself a glass of wine and found her battered copy of Anne of Green Gables. She wanted something without any real romance. By chapter four, she was feeling better. By chapter five, she’d refilled her wineglass. And again at chapter ten. Once more at chapter fifteen. By chapter seventeen, she was having trouble focusing on the words.
If Ezra were home, she would curl up against him on the couch. If he were home, she wouldn’t have had nearly an entire bottle of wine all on her own. If he were home, she would’ve eaten dinner. She looked at her list again. Even without Ezra there, she should eat dinner. She could eat dinner.
Emily got up and went into the kitchen. She pulled out the end of a baguette from the bread box and some cheese from the refrigerator and ate them both while looking into the bonus room. It was still a mess. She should clean it out, since she was home alone and it was barely eight p.m. What even was in there?
She hated the quiet of the apartment, so by force of habit she asked Alexa to play some jazz but then realized that was what Ezra liked best, not her, so she switched it to pop as she walked into the tiny, cluttered room. This was a good project for the night. She could feel accomplished, get something done.