“We did try to have kids.” My voice was a shaking whisper, reflecting all of the shattered emotions I couldn’t reconcile. “We tried for two years.”

He was silent for a long time. I had kept this to myself during our entire struggle. Only Nick knew how desperately I wanted a baby and how impossible it seemed. We hadn’t told our parents or our families because we wanted to avoid this moment. We wanted to avoid the questions and the pity and the attempts to understand something that devastated both of us- something we couldn’t understand ourselves.

“Oh,” Josh finally groaned. “I wondered-”

“It’s me,” I said quickly. “Or at least that’s what our lab results say. I’m the one that stopped it from happening.”

My brother had rolled up the sleeves to his oxford and looked out of place next to the sudsy water and pile of dirty dishes. He had the face of a corporate man. He was all clean angles and sharp edges.

But at this moment, he looked as lost as I felt.

“That’s not a reason to get a divorce, Katie.” His rasping rumble grated against my heart and I wanted to cry.

“That’s not why we’re getting divorced, Josh.”

“It’s a reason for something,” he pushed.

“Then it’s a reason that led up to the reason we’re getting divorced. There’s a lot to us that you never saw or heard about. A lot you will never hear about. Whatever my reasons for ending my marriage are mine alone. I don’t expect you to understand.”

“Does he know them?”

“Does he know what?”

“Your reasons for leaving him.”

The wind rushed out of me and I thought I might pass out for a minute. The pain was too acute, too blinding. I couldn’t breathe through this. I couldn’t live through this. My brother had dealt the final blow, but the expression on Nick’s face, when he had grabbed the pillow off our bed to take it downstairs all those months ago, annihilated whatever was left of my heart.

“Yes,” I whispered. “And he has his own reasons for wanting to leave me too.”

We finished the dishes in silence. I left my parent’s house soon after that, using the valid excuse that I had a ton of papers to grade. My parents weren’t happy to see me leave, but I wasn’t sure they would have been happy to have me stay either.

I drove back to the small house I’d shared with Nick for the last five years. It was empty when I got there except for my puppy. Of course. I lived by myself now.

It was quiet too.

Too quiet.

It was dark and quiet and for the first time since we bought this damn house, I hated it. I hated it because it represented everything I couldn’t have. Everything I lost.

I hated Nick too.

He wasn’t supposed to let our marriage end like this. He wasn’t supposed to let things get this bad.

And most of all.

I hated myself.

I couldn’t help it. At the end of the day… after all of my explanations and logical choices, after my lists of his wrongdoings and all of the reasons we were wrong for each other, I hated myself and what I had done.

I hated myself for what I couldn’t take back.

Chapter Three

10. He misses the dog.

I threw my keys down on the counter and looked at the leftover dishes from last night. I should have done them after dinner, but I couldn’t find the energy. At the time, I told myself it was a reward for not picking up fast food on the way home from work again, but now I recognized my laziness for what it was.

It was funny how living by myself spotlighted all of these faults I hadn’t noticed before. When Nick lived here, I always cleaned up after dinner. He hadn’t asked me to or expected it, but I had always felt the drive to please him.

Okay, maybe not in every way. But he did things for me. He took out the trash without being asked. He changed lightbulbs when they burned out. He walked the dog when it rained. The dishes were part of my portion of housekeeping and whatever else you could say about me or about how I treated Nick, at least I kept that part of our bargain.

For better or worse, in sickness and in health, you mow the yard and I’ll scrub the pans.

Now my vows were as empty and meaningless as my chores. What was the point of cleaning up if there was no one here to appreciate my effort?

I wanted gold stars and verbal affirmation.

The dog gave me neither of those things.

My feet ached and my head buzzed with the chaos of the day. I yawned so long and wide I half expected my jaw to unhinge.

I stood at the counter listening to the house. The ice machine kicked on and the refrigerator started buzzing. I could hear the hallway clock ticking its rhythmic tocks as it kept time. The most beautiful dog in the entire world plopped on the ground at my feet and let out a long puppy sigh.

I could see it in her big brown eyes. Finally, you’re home, woman. Now pay me attention and fetch my chewie.

To be honest, she really wasn’t the most beautiful dog in the world, but she was really close. And she was beyond spoiled, making her intolerably high maintenance and prissy. But she was mine. I loved her as much as I loved any human.

She was a petite beagle with big floppy ears that perked up when she was interested in something and huge chocolate eyes that conveyed more emotion than I thought a dog should be capable of. Her shiny coat was a mixture of caramel and white and was nice and silky because Nick insisted on the expensive dog food and weekly baths.

I named her Anne after my favorite teacher, Anne Shirley, from the Anne of Avonlea books. But Nick had started calling her Annie from the very beginning and the nickname stuck. She was my Annie-girl and when all other people failed me, she was my rock.

I swept down and rubbed her ears with my two hands. Immediately the stress of the day started to melt from my shoulders and the dishes, the bills left discarded on the table and my looming divorce didn’t feel so impossible anymore.

“What did you do all day?” I asked her with a soft voice. “Did you miss me?”

A deep, masculine voice came out of her, answering my question, “I doubt that. She was too busy eating my socks.”

I let out an ear-splitting scream and fell backward on my butt. After a few seconds of blind panic in which I contemplated the distance to my nearest butcher knife, sanity returned. I eventually recognized the voice and that it hadn’t come from my dog.

It had come from my husband. My soon to be ex-husband.

I hadn’t seen him in four months and now he was here. I had to brace myself before I could look at him.

“Nick! God!” My hand landed on my chest and I pushed down, trying to slow my racing heart. “You scared the hell out of me!”

He leaned over the white-tiled island and stared at me with listless eyes. “I thought you heard me come in.”

I pressed my lips together and tried to ignore the pang of pain that hit me low in the gut. His eyes used to be his most expressive feature. They could glisten with humor or darken with lust in the span of three seconds. They were what had pulled me so deeply into him so quickly. All he had to do was look at me and I had been his.

Until now. Now they stared at me as if I were the most uninteresting thing on the planet. They didn’t light up when I walked into the room. They didn’t dance with some sarcastic thought spinning around in his sharp mind. They didn’t heat with desire or harden with frustration.

They just barely glanced at me, shuttered and apathetic.

“I didn’t,” I snapped. My heart hadn’t found its normal beat yet and my voice sounded frustratingly breathless.

He moved around the island and held out his hand to me. I reluctantly took it and tried to be civil.

We had promised each other a peaceful divorce. This was something we both wanted. We had no reason to be anything but nice to each other.