He gripped the handle of the front door and hesitated a moment. I waited for him to speak, my eyes darting between his face and the handle. Instead, he opened the door and stepped out onto the broken walkway. I followed him to a sleek, silver Mercedes-Benz.

I ran my hands over my suddenly cold arms, wishing for a sweater to curl into at that moment. With automatic movements, he opened the passenger door to let me in. I tried not to look over at him as we pulled away, but after a few moments of silence had passed, I couldn’t help myself. He looked back at me and smiled.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” I asked.

“Yes.”

I looked around the unfamiliar car. “Are you mad about what just happened?” I asked the dashboard.

He reached over confidently to squeeze my bare knee. “No.”

I covered his hand with mine. There was nothing and everything to say. We were quiet the rest of the way home.

Our hands remained on my leg during the drive. I studied both of them, the way his long fingers and massive palm took up the whole lower half of my thigh. The gesture was meant to be comforting. But to me it was erotic. When he adjusted his grip, I silently willed his hand to slide up my skirt. But it didn’t, and when I smoothed a fingertip over his knuckles, he flipped his palm up and took my hand.

There were no appropriate words: good-bye, see you soon, see you never – none of it felt right. So I let go of his hand and climbed out when he pulled up to the curb.

“Olivia.”

I leaned back into the car. There was a strangely uncomfortable look on his face.

“There are other options.”

I stared back into his eyes, trying not to dive across the car into his lap. After a moment, I just shut the door and vowed to forget what he’d just said.

~

As soon as the front door shut behind me, Bill was in the kitchen.

“How was your day? Get back to the office all right?”

“Yes.”

“How’d you like driving in the architect’s car? It’s a V12. I noticed it on my way out. Your dad would love it.”

I looked up at him and set my purse on the counter. “Sure.”

 “He seemed impressed with the house. Did he say anything to you?”

“Honey, I just walked in the door,” I said, untying the belt of my jacket. I removed it slowly and hung it up as Bill waited. “What happened with the jury?” I braced myself against the counter to slide off my shoes.

His smile was victorious. “We won.”

“Oh, Bill. That’s great news.”

“I was worried that they came to a verdict so quickly, but it turned out in our favor. So aren’t you going to say anything about the house?”

I sighed. “Yes, actually.”

“I’m excited, babe. I know I was skeptical because of the amount of work it will take, but I’m on board now. I’m just so ready to get started with our life already.”

“Yes, but Bill, you should have consulted me first.”

“Consulted you? Meaning?”

“We should have sat down and talked – ”

“Whoa. What are you saying? You told me you wanted this,” he said defensively.

“I do, I just – you made the offer without discussing it with me. This is my home, my money too.”

“Well, technically, babe, my money is going toward the down payment.”

I drew back and crossed my arms. “So I don’t get a say?”

“Of course you do, but we already discussed it,” he said. “You said yes. Once I got the information I needed from the guys, I knew we were good to go.”

“I know you’re excited, I am too. But would it have killed you to wait one night so we could go over this together?”

“And give you another opportunity to back out? No way, babe. This is happening. It’s done.”

“I’m not going to back out. When you make decisions without me though, it makes me feel like you don’t respect my opinion.”

“I believe your opinion was ‘yes, Bill, I want the house. Buy me this house.’ I believe it took a good eight or nine houses for you to decide that.”

I pursed my lips. “I do want the house.”

“So what’s the problem?”

The problem? I repeated to myself. The problem is that I almost had sex with someone else this afternoon. The problem is that I’m not sure of anything anymore. The problem is that I don’t know how to make a home with you!

I shook the vicious thoughts from my head. How could I think that about this man who’d been nothing but good to me since the day we met? Of course I knew how to make a home with him. It would happen day by day – one thing at a time – we would build and build and build –

“I don’t know,” he said with exasperation, running his hand over his face. “I can’t keep up with your back and forth. But it’s too late anyway. You’ll just have to trust that I’m making the right decision for both of us. The offer is made, and when they accept, that’s it.”

I nodded and took a deep breath. “Yes,” I agreed. “Yes, that sounds right and good and . . . Yes.”

“I have work to do. There’s champagne in the fridge, you can help yourself.”

“Bill,” I sighed, but he disappeared. I leaned over the kitchen counter and put my head in my hands. Wasn’t it enough that I had betrayed him? Been vile to him for months? Was I now trying to make him unhappy? I straightened my shoulders. I would have to try harder, or I was going to drive an even bigger wedge between us. This was important to him, and it was something that would change our lives for the better.

I found him at his desk, hunched over a stack of papers. My hand rested on his shoulder. “I’m sorry,” I said when he looked up. “I am really excited about the offer. I know this means a lot to you, and it does to me too.”

“This is the right decision. We have to move forward. I can’t stay in this place any longer.”

I nodded. Move forward. Leave this place behind. Whatever is holding me back, I have to give it up.

“Just think. We will finally have a home of our own. Who knows? We might have this house forever. We’ll grow old together there. Down the line, we’ll raise our children there – at that point, hopefully I’ll be partner at the firm, and I’ll be around more. I’ll come home, you’ll be cooking with the kids or getting them ready for basketball practice. We’ll have family dinners, a Christmas tree by the fire, birthday parties in the backyard . . . . One day, we’ll pass the house down to our children, and them to their children. It’s the beginning of our future.”

I took a small step backward, thrown by the idyllic smile on his face. He was so confident in what he was saying, as though he’d already glimpsed into the future. As if, in his mind, it were the past, it had already happened. He’d seen me there, baking pies in a ruffle-trimmed, red and white apron. In his fantasy, I wanted those things too.

But didn’t I? I wanted a place to call home, somewhere that was mine, where I felt safe enough to let go of the past. To stop worrying about how things could disappear or break or end without warning. What he had described sounded like a place to be where I was. In the present. It sounded like a home – a warm, loving home with a steadfast husband and not only a child, but children. Plural.

“All right,” he said, and I lifted my eyes back to his. He made a show of getting out of his chair. “One glass of champagne to celebrate, but then I really do need to get back to work.”

~

After Bill had gone to bed, I stayed up at the kitchen table, staring into the abyss. I envisioned over and over again the life he had described. Someone else’s life. Dread surfaced in the form of chills over my skin. I had promised those things to Bill in front of everyone we loved years ago. I never knew if I wanted them, but I had promised them forever with two words: I do.

What scared me most was that I might give him those things because I was supposed to. And had David never come along, I might not have questioned the path I was on.

Because now, something else was developing inside of me. Maybe there was another way to love. A selfless, open way, where you took the good with the bad and the ugly with the beautiful. A way where, in order to experience bliss, you had to risk pain – you had to risk everything.

I can’t think of this now, I decided. Tomorrow, with fresh eyes, things will be better. I rose from the table and went to bed.

~

As Bill and I waited for our realtor’s call, things became increasingly stressful. The harder I tried to forget David in that house, the clearer I saw him. Each night after Bill had fallen asleep, I found myself somewhere in the house, staring straight ahead.

In our bathroom, I had sat against the tub, tormenting myself with the meaningless details of my new life. Like what time I would wake up to catch the train to work. And was there a coffee shop on the way? Would being a mom mean that I’d have to cut my hair shorter? I wondered how to change a diaper, what types of friends I would have in the suburbs, whether or not there was an animal shelter nearby.

A different night, on the couch with the TV muted, I worried about the bigger things. I wondered if Bill expected me to quit my job, and how had we never discussed that? Or how often Gretchen and Lucy would make the trip to see us, or at what point we should start saving for a college fund . . . or this, or that.

And David. David. David. There was no night to think of him, because he was always there, telling me there were other options when I just didn’t want to admit that there could be.