My marriage is ending. I'm consumed by emotions too numerous to name, but the only one I can process in this moment is blind panic. I knew that things were bad, I could feel Kevin drifting further and further away—from me, from our family—every single day.

At first, it was just that he had to work later. Then his work required nights spent in the office. Then weekends, too. Soon, I was virtually a single parent, and I only saw my husband in passing.

I sit here in our bedroom on the very bed where we made our son, paralyzed by my panic. He’s calmly packing his things so he can go be with the woman he just told me “doesn’t make me feel like I owe her anything.”

I suspected that he was having affairs. After we came back from a visit to my sister, Addie, I started paying attention. And when I finally had proof, I confronted him. He denied it. Said it was crazy, and that I was crazy.

But tonight, he’s singing a different tune. He came to me and confessed. I thought the confession was a prelude to an expression of contrition, to plead for forgiveness. It turns out it was just the beginning of his goodbye.

“Kevin, look at me. Think about what you’re doing,” I say to him. I'm unable to muster the energy to raise my voice.

He stops packing and glances over his shoulder at me. His eyes, that used to smile at me, are looking me up and down with scorn.

“Milly, it’s dead. Has been for a long time.” His voice is so unequivocal. He’s looking at me like I'm the one who is spitting on us, like this is my fault.

“Kevin, it’s not dead. We have a family, we have Anthony, and we’ve built a life.”

As I say this, my heart knows it’s not true. But this was not supposed to happen. It can’t happen. This was everything I’d worked so hard to avoid.

I'm trying to remain calm. There has to be a resolution that doesn’t include him leaving me to go live with someone else.

“This life is a life you’ve built, Milly. I don’t want to live like . . . this.” He says the last word at me as his arm sweeps across our beautifully decorated bedroom, his eyes full of disdain as they follow the arc of his arm.

“Sex is boring, we don’t talk about anything but my job and Anthony. You’re totally consumed with us, you have nothing of your own, and I feel smothered.” He looks me up and down, his eyes narrowed, and then he shrugs.

“Your body is still nice, but I can’t get it up for you anymore. Haven’t you noticed?”

Every word a tiny prick, puncture, making holes in the integrity of my composure until I feel it start to falter.

Sex is boring?

Nothing of my own?

Can’t get it up for you anymore.

Haven’t you noticed?

These words ping around my skull like a metal ball in an arcade game, hitting all of my most sensitive places.

I flush, hot and hard. It’s true we haven’t had sex in a while, but honestly, I don’t mind. Sex had never been my favorite part of our relationship. I’d never had an orgasm with him inside me, and he didn’t like oral—giving or receiving—so it was usually over once he was done.

“Kevin, when we got married, this—” I sweep my arms out mimicking his earlier movement, “is what you wanted. Me at home while you went to work. I keep this house pristine, your son is happy, smart, and loving.”

“I noticed you skipped the sex part,” he says mockingly without turning around.

I glance down at my hands, folded in my lap and watch as the tears I didn’t even realize were falling land and run down my hands.

It’s Friday night and Anthony is out with my mother. Kevin waited for him to be gone so he could drop this nuclear bomb and then leave like the complete coward he is.

He grabs the last of his underwear from the drawer and the slam of it makes me look up again.

He continues talking without looking at me.

“You have that trust fund you haven’t touched in years, you can have the house, your car, and I’ll pay Ant’s tuition. But this is it, Milly.”

He says these things, these words that are like pieces of shrapnel tearing through the fabric of my life, like he's telling me that maybe I need a new car.

“Kevin.” My self-control disappears, my panic completely takes over, and I stand up and walk toward him.

I take him in as I approach. He shaves his head completely bald to hide a thinning crown, but it works. His mother’s Puerto Rican legacy left him with perpetually olive skin and thickly lashed, dark-brown eyes. He works out and is still as trim at thirty-three as he was at twenty-one. But now, I can’t see any trace of the handsome man I decided would make a good partner for me and a good father to my children.

I reach out and grab his arms, but he yanks out of my grasp.

“Listen, it’s too late for this shit, Milly. I’m sorry, but I'm not the man for you. Maybe I never was. I don’t know. But I'm done wasting my life with a woman who I don’t love and don’t even want to fuck anymore.”

I rear back as if he struck me.

“Kevin, how . . . ?” My question trails off; I don’t even know what I'm asking.

But, he seems to. And he straightens to his full height, his eyes meeting mine directly for the first time in a long time. They are full of so much contempt that I take a step back.

“I’ll tell you why, Milly. You’re pathetic. I bet the thing that bothers you most about what I just said is the word ‘fuck.’ You’re boring. And I don’t want to live in this pristine prison you’ve created. And now this shit with your father has given you baggage I just don’t want to be associated with.”

I feel like the entire foundation of my life has been pulled out from underneath me. My knees give out and I fall, gracelessly, to the ground. Kevin steps over me like I'm one of the dirty socks he always leaves littered on the floor of our closet. I hear the teeth on the zipper of his suitcase as they engage, closing over his belongings and signaling the end of my life as I know it.

This sound spurs me into action. I spring to my feet and lunge for him.

“Kevin, you can’t. You cannot leave me. I want more,” I scream as I clutch his shirt front, clinging to it like it’s my life vest in a raging sea.

He grabs my wrists and starts to pry my hands loose, I only cling tighter.

“Milly, stop this. What the fuck are you doing?” His eyes go from plain disdain to burning fury as he starts to try to shake me loose.

“No! You can’t,” I scream again as I begin to cry in earnest and move my arms up to wrap around his neck.

“You are crazy. Stop this.” I'm a tall woman, but Kevin is taller and at least seventy pounds heavier than me. There is no contest and with his next shove, I go flying, my trajectory broken by the frame of our king-sized sleigh bed. I land on our mattress, flat on my back, and staring at the ceiling.

I hear his footfalls as he approaches, and I close my eyes to avoid having to face him. He's struggling to catch his breath as he speaks to me in a voice so menacing I feel a shudder run through me.

“Don’t get up, Milly. Stay there. If you even think about moving from that bed, I will call the fucking police,” he commands.

And, I don’t move. Not because of his threat, but because I’m physically incapable. My entire body is arrested in a state of shock.

I don’t say another word as I hear him pick up his suitcases and start toward the door.

His footsteps falter just as he starts to open our bedroom door and he says, “Oh, and Milly.” I open my eyes, thinking that maybe he’s not leaving. I’m wrong. “Happy New Year,” he says as he walks out of our bedroom.

I don’t move as I hear the front door slam shut with a finality that tells me he won’t be back.

I don’t say a word as I hear his car pull out of our driveway.

I lie there, not moving, not speaking as my whole life leaves me.

---

I got back from visiting my sister, Addie, in London a few months ago. It was such a bittersweet visit. Addie has always been the most distant and removed of the three of us. She carries so much resentment, but I didn’t realize how much until she unleashed her anger on my mother and me the night before we left. Her words about me and how she perceived the way I have chosen to live my life cut me like a hot knife cuts through butter. It was painful to hear her say she feels like I have given up my dreams for my husband.

Having a husband was my dream, it’s all I ever wanted. From the time I was a little girl. I used to watch my parents dance around the living room when they thought we were all in bed. I saw the way my father watched my mother, like the sun rose and set on her head. I knew one day I would have that kind of love.

My mother had been a lawyer before I was born, that is how she and Daddy met, but then she became a full-time mom. She was our class mother, the carpool driver for after school activities. She packed every lunch, cooked dinner every night, was at every practice, every game, every recital. Our house was where all of our friends hung out after school. It was my little slice of heaven and I couldn’t wait to grow up and replicate it.

When my dad left our world completely crumbled. We moved to Maryland to try to get away from the threats, the press, and stigma of his stunning betrayal.

I knew then, like I know now, that my father’s disappearing was not something all men do. Unlike my sisters, Addie and Lilly, it didn’t make me wary of committed relationships, if anything it made me more desperate for one.

I saw how my mother, in the weeks before my father left, was constantly asking him questions, demanding to know things he didn’t want to tell her.

I saw how in the days before he left, she wasn’t trying as hard with her appearance. She stopped wearing makeup, always had her hair up in a bun, and stopped smiling. I don’t know what happened, but I knew I would be a stronger wife than she was.

I would, no matter what, always be pretty, always keep the house tidy, never push too hard and never make him feel like I wasn’t happy. And that’s what I’d done.

The current state of my life highlights my youthful miscalculation.

From the moment I met Kevin during my sophomore year at Brown, I committed to being the model girlfriend and then, wife.

He’d been a year ahead of me. When he graduated, and went straight to Wall Street, I was sure he’d forget about me. But he didn’t. He proposed to me on the first weekend I went to visit him and I said yes. We were married three weeks after I graduated, and I never looked back. I was only twenty-one, but I knew that this was the life I was meant to live.

So, in the dawn hours of this new day, as I lay in exactly the same position he left me in, flat on my back, in the middle of our bed, I don’t know what any of this means.

Who am I, if not a wife? Am I even anyone?

I think about Anthony and a little flame of sadness licks at the inside of my chest, reminding me I’m alive and have a very good reason to stay that way.

Thinking of Anthony also renews my panic. What am I going to tell him? He and his dad aren’t particularly close, mainly because Kevin is gone so much. But, he loves his dad and wouldn’t understand him not being here at all.

Kevin wouldn’t try to take him from me, would he? Would he?

This makes me sit right up. Oh, dear God. He mentioned paying Anthony’s tuition, which means he’s telling me I won’t be responsible for it, so that likely means Anthony will be with me.

I lie back down, as my momentary flash of anger is replaced by sadness and fear.

What am I going to do? What would my mother say? What would my sisters say?

My mother lives in the same house. I couldn’t hide it from her, but Lilly was in Miami—I think. Addie is in London, they didn’t have to know.

Kevin and I could work this out. We could. Didn’t all marriages go through this?

A woman who I don’t love resounds in my head, like an alert, reminding me that my thoughts of reconciliation are pure folly.

I feel a fissure in my chest, a crack so deep I know if I reach down to touch the spot, my fingers will come away covered in blood.

I haven’t cried in almost ten years—unless you count the first time I held my son—but this, this wasn’t crying. This is a deep lament. I wail, and scream into my pillow.

I cry for the children I won’t have. I cry for the fracture Kevin has caused, which no matter what happens, would never fully heal. I cry for my son. I cry for myself, and for my failure as a wife.

I remember that on another New Year’s Day, I cried myself to sleep over another man. I open my bedside drawer and dig to the bottom of it. I pull out the picture I haven’t looked at in years and stare at it. Dean’s smile, the happiness in my gaze is too much. I don’t think I can bear the weight of my pain.

I cry until I finally fall asleep. I don’t hear my mother come in and cover me with my comforter. I don’t feel the brush of my son’s lips across my forehead.

I sleep for the next eighteen hours, and while I sleep, I call out for my father. It is my mother, as always, who answers. She crawls into bed with me after she has fed Anthony and put him to sleep.

She holds me all night.