“Yes.”
“And you still visited me while I was recovering.”
“Yes.”
I smiled.
“I have a very good husband.”
He looked at me.
“I have a very good wife.”
I laughed quietly.
“That’s debatable.”
“No, it isn’t.”
David came back the next day.
And the next.
Patricia brought Rosalind to my hospital room before I was discharged.
Then, the following week, Emily came to our house.
Just Emily.
She sat with me in the kitchen.
We drank tea for three hours.
At first, we talked carefully.
Like two people walking across a bridge neither fully trusted yet.
She told me more about James, Rosalind’s father.
He was visiting on Saturdays and trying to figure out what role he would have in their daughter’s life.
He wasn’t completely absent.
But he wasn’t fully present either.
They were working on it.
Then Emily told me about the woman she had loved.
The relationship was over by then, but it had mattered deeply to her.
Two years earlier, I would have been too busy managing my own discomfort to truly hear her.
This time, I listened.
She told me about university.
Her plans.
The work she wanted to do.
The life she imagined for herself and Rosalind.
And I simply listened.
Eventually, Emily noticed.
“You’re different.”
“I’ve been trying.”
“What does trying mean?”
I thought carefully before answering.
“It means realizing that the beliefs I had about who you should be were really about me.”
She watched me.
“When you told me who you were, I felt uncomfortable because your truth didn’t match the future I had imagined for you.”
I shook my head.
“But my discomfort was never your responsibility. It was mine to examine. Instead, I made you feel smaller so I wouldn’t have to question myself.”
Emily nodded slowly.
“That was well said.”
“I’ve had two years to figure out how to say it.”
