This Is Where We Stop novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Kitchen Table

Colson comes home at one in the morning, signs out of pride, and sends texts she blocks.

Colson came home at ten past one.

I was sitting at the kitchen table with the lights on and the manila envelope in front of me.

He dropped his keys in the dish and shook the rain off his jacket.

"You didn't wait up, did you? Mar, you have an early case." He smiled at me. "Chantal's alternator was dead. I called a guy."

"You told me twenty minutes."

"The guy took a while."

He crossed to the fridge, took out the orange juice, and drank from the carton.

I had asked him a hundred times not to do that.

"The department waited an hour and a half for you," I said. "The cake had a candle in it."

"I'll make it up to you." He wiped his mouth. "Saturday. Anywhere you want."

I pushed the envelope across the table.

He looked at it, and then at me, and then he laughed.

It was a real laugh, easy and warm, the one that used to make me forgive him.

"What is this?"

"Open it."

He pulled out the papers and read the first page standing up.

His face did not change until he reached the bottom.

"This is a divorce petition."

"Yes."

"Is this about the fleece?" He set the carton down. "Mara, come on. I'll buy you something real. A watch. You pick."

"It isn't about the fleece."

"Then what is it about?"

"Colson, you left our anniversary dinner for a woman with a dead battery, and you took a photo of it."

"I didn't take that photo. Chantal did."

"You let her post it."

"It's a picture of a guy helping a friend." He ran a hand through his hair. "You're a doctor. You know what an emergency is."

I looked at him.

"I know exactly what an emergency is," I said. "You've never once called mine one."

He was quiet for a second.

Then I watched something I had seen before. He decided it was a bluff.

"Okay," Colson said. "Okay. You're tired. It's been a long month."

"Sign it."

"Mara."

"Sign it, Colson. Or I'll sit here until you do."

He stared at me, and I stared back.

I had faced down a chief resident at three in the morning with a patient's blood on my shoes. A man at a kitchen table was not going to win this.

He took the pen from the envelope.

"Fine." His jaw was tight. "You want to scare me, fine. You'll be back by Friday."

He signed on the line with a big, angry flourish and pushed the page across.

"There," he said. "Happy?"

I checked the signature, and the date, and the witness line.

Then I stood up and took the envelope.

"What are you doing?"

"Going to bed."

"Where?"

I went into the bedroom and took my gym bag out of the closet.

Three scrub sets. Two pairs of jeans. My laptop, my passport, my grandmother's watch, and the good stethoscope.

I did not take the wedding photos. I did not take the fleece, which was still draped over a chair at a restaurant.

Colson stood in the bedroom doorway while I packed.

"This is insane," he said. "You're being insane. Where are you going to go?"

"The hospital has on-call rooms."

"At one in the morning? Over a vest?"

I zipped the bag.

"Mar, I was there for you. I held your hand when your dad died. Who was there when you were studying for your boards?"

He had held my hand once. He had also taken a call from Chantal in the same hallway, five minutes later, and left.

I did not say that. I had said enough.

I put on my coat and walked out.

On the street, under the porch light, my phone started buzzing.

Where are you?

Come home. We can talk about this.

Mara, I signed it, doesn't that show I'm serious about listening?

That was Colson, in three messages, one after another.

Then a fourth buzz, from a number I knew by heart.

Mara, it's Chantal. I'm SO sorry if I caused anything tonight. Colson told me you're upset!! I would never want to come between you two. Call me, okay? I'll make it right.

Her sorrow came in capital letters, as always.

I stood in the rain and thought about the last eight years.

In all that time, I had never once been the person Colson ran toward.

I opened my settings.

I blocked Colson's number. Then I blocked Chantal's.

The phone went quiet in my hand.

It stayed quiet for a moment.

Then a text came in from an unknown number, a different one, one he must have borrowed from the ambulance station.

Chantal says you're being dramatic.

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