Page 4 of Under Locke & Key

If these walls could talk, they’d curse Stephanie Dawson. Or maybe I just wish I could. Does she even go by Dawson anymore? Or is it just one more thing she’s content to leave behind along with me?

I follow the hollow clacks of her shoes against bare floors—the rugs rolled up and stowed away with sticky notes on each denoting their loyalties.

It’s so faint the new owners will miss it, or paint over it if they do notice, but there are little shapes bleached into the walls from the sun on our photographs and a larger one from the giant canvas we did that photoshoot for.

With a dog that wasn’t even our own.

The silence between us stretches five years, a canyon of words unsaid that might have made a difference at any point other than this one, ‘cause they’re useless now.

The lawyers have been paid. The papers are signed.

Our lives intersected and cleaved from each other with the flick of ink on a dotted line.

I’ve never hated the sight of my name more than I do in those documents.

There’s so much said about the stages of grief for when someone dies, but can you grieve someone who is very much alive?

How do you mourn the death of what lived between you?

How do you feel their loss when their high heels click in front of you and you know the shape of their calves and the feel of their skin beneath your hands—skin that’s closer than it’s been in almost a year and no longer yours to touch?

“I’ll take care of the cleaning fee.” Stephanie has no idea where my mind’s at, or maybe she doesn’t care.

It’s not her job to care anymore.

I’d like to get angry, to lash out and say that I busted my ass packing and moving and cleaning this place from top to bottom by my kick-out date, but it wouldn’t do anything.

Holding my tongue has been a constant almost as long as the stupid combination robot vacuum mop that never worked but Stephanie insisted we needed.

“Thank you.” My voice is rough with misuse. Between boxing up the last of my stuff and getting it in a storage unit by the date she wanted to start showing the house to other people, I haven’t spoken to anyone.

My parents call. Of course they do. But I haven’t answered them beyond a few short text messages for over a week.

I feel bad. I should. I’ve barely seen them over the last few years since Stephanie preferred not to go visit them.

I’ve been busy—watching the last part of my marriage and my life disappear with each piece of furniture until it’s just me and her and the walls that are as quiet as I am.

I hate that I’m slinking home a failure when all I’ve ever wanted is what my parents have.

It just goes to show that signatures on a paper don’t make a marriage, and that a document doesn’t denote a true partnership.

“The agent will be by in the morning but I wanted to get a look at it before I brought her over.” She’s rambling, I realize. The closest she gets to it. Stephanie is ruthlessly efficient and stalling for time with little bits of conversation is beneath her.

I say nothing. What can I? I hope our life fetches a good price so we can both sit flush but alone out in the cold? Does she already have someone new? Nothing about her looks any different than it did nine months ago.

Her blonde hair is sleek and blown out to within an inch of its life.

I know because I watched her do it a thousand times, her knee bouncing as she dragged the big round brush through golden strands that cost a couple hundred every month.

She’s got her same immaculate makeup that I jokingly called war-paint on the night she met my mother for the first time and has no smudging or streaks. No tears shed.

My sorrow has been abundant. It echoes within me even now—although muted with time.

But I can’t cry anymore, not in front of her.

I won’t and I shouldn’t—not when the death of our marriage was slow and painful.

And as I watched our relationship wither and die—a bystander to my own life—I can’t help but wonder if there were moments where we could have revived it and we just didn't. Why is that?

If we wanted it, wouldn't we fight for it? Instead of just fighting each other?

We haunt the living room and wander further, and the kitchen countertop is cool beneath my fingertips when I ghost my fingers over the surface.

Stephanie inspects it through the eyes of all the newcomers who will walk through here with dreams in their eyes a week from now.

I drink in every memory I’m leaving behind until I’m drowning in remembrance for the sake of it—with only hurt to show for my efforts.

Steph’s delicate hand wraps around the metal bannister—that I insisted was too cold and she insisted was a better alternative than the dinky old-fashioned wood I preferred—and her bare ring finger doesn’t have a tan line or indentation of any kind.

Nine months is all it took for it to fade away.

I refuse to look at my own hand. White gold has embedded itself into my skin and I don’t know what my hand will look like without it—a final holdout of delusion and grasping for what is comfortable and known.

Although I can’t help thinking that even pain can be comfortable when we’ve grown used to it.

The sound of our breathing and footsteps ricochets against the narrow walls of the corridor between bedrooms. At the end of the hall, door splayed open and welcoming, we step into our old bedroom and I want to rip the carpet up with my bare hands.

Cream. Thick and lush and more expensive than my first car was. There are indentations in the carpet where our bed stood. No matter how much I vacuumed and scratched my fingers through the weave, it refused to leave. Without the bed the room feels cavernous with just the two of us there to fill it.

What a sorry pair we make.

Staring at the bottom indentation, I let my gaze blur and the room as I know it fills my mind.

End tables, hers near-empty with whichever self-help book she’s reading, the retainer in its container she’d die before admitting she still used—a bottle of Voss that she gets imported by the crateload.

Mine, fiction piled upon fiction, and my glasses only half-closed so I can grab one of the legs in the morning when I’m too bleary to make them out properly.

It’s the only way I can avoid accidentally touching the lenses.

“Are you going to say anything?” Stephanie pulls me from my mental catalog and I turn to face her, framed by the doorway with the sunset dappling onto her face.

Arms crossed, over her stomach more so than her chest, she looks vulnerable and it’s not something I’m ready for.

The only way I’ve kept myself upright—moving and breathing, and somewhat human—has been picturing her indifference to all of this.

Somehow it’s easier for me to accept this outcome if I think she made this choice in a detached and cold way.

But if she breaks, I do.

“What do you want me to say?” Is there something I can say that would take all this back? Will my words douse the flames we went down in even though we’re just ash now?

She scoffs, or perhaps it’s a bit of breath caught at the back of her throat, but either way it’s not a happy sound. Her lip curls in disdain and I want to sink onto the carpet and decay into it.

“ Anything ,” Stephanie hisses. “Say anything. Fight. Scream. Do fucking something!” Her voice rises until it echoes around me in the empty room, the carpet not enough to dampen the sound. She wants a “fuck you” fight but I’ve never been that guy and she knows it.

“It won’t change anything. I could tell you I don’t want this but you already know that.

I could tell you that I love you and I meant it when I promised the rest of my days to you, and I always keep my promises, but it would be redundant.

Nothing I say now will make a difference to what’s left here.

You made that choice for the both of us. ”

It’s the closest I’ve gotten to trying to hurt her since this all began.

First was denial, like those pesky stages of grief.

I skipped disbelief; it made sense to me in some sick way.

From the moment I took her out on our first date, I’ve been outrunning the feeling of not being good enough.

Stephanie leaving me felt like an inevitability.

“What did you expect me to do?” Stephanie asks.

It’s the stupidest question. There’s a hysterical edge to my laugh when it bubbles past my lips—pained and dry and the furthest thing from funny I’ve ever heard.

“I expected you to love me. I expected us being together and married to be enough for you. God knows it was enough for me.”

“Bryce.” It’s long-suffering. As if she’s already explained it to me multiple times even though nothing even close to a reason has crossed her lips since that night almost a year ago.

“Why, Steph?”

She swallows, my eyes caught on the column of her throat, blurred with past and present—tiny marks from my kisses and my stubble, and now the nervous movement of her gulping back her feelings. This is my last chance to ask. I’m not just saying goodbye to our house today. This is it for us.

“I told you why, Bryce.” She hugs herself, eyes flicking away from mine as if she can’t bring herself to look me in the eye while she lies. Which is ridiculous. Stephanie is the best liar I’ve ever known.

“No.”

Her hair flips over her shoulder as she pivots to face me fully, her eyes blazing with something I can’t put a name to and I don’t want to try anymore.

“No, what? You’re calling me a liar?”

“No. I just—there’s got to be more to it than you leaving because you’re tired of us.

You don’t throw away five years of marriage because you’re tired.

I’ve seen you run yourself ragged for work, over and over.

I’ve seen you make yourself sick after you pushed yourself further than you possibly could go. ”