Page 5 of Under Locke & Key

“So what? You want me to exhaust myself for you? You want me to hurt myself for your sake?” She takes a step toward me, her shoes silent against the carpet now. Almost close enough for me to pick up the notes of her perfume.

“No! Of course not. I just—” I look down at my empty hands, trying to gesture and explain while at a loss for the words.

How do I ask her why I wasn’t good enough when it’s all I’ve been able to think about through these nine months of separation?

The words die on my tongue before I can form them and my heart aches at the thought of even asking.

Because I know I’m not good enough and I don’t know if I could handle the why.

“I was trying my best to keep this amicable , but you won’t be happy until I’ve been mean.

Is that it? You want me to be mean? You need someone to blame?

” Her expression twists between anger and pain and I don’t know what to do when I no longer have the right to pull her against my body to absorb it all.

“Steph, please. You know that’s not what I mean?—”

“I didn’t leave us. I left you . The truth is, I thought you were a different kind of guy than you actually are. We started along the same road and then you just . . . stalled. I can’t keep slowing down for you.”

I just watch as she starts the flaying process. The words kiss my skin with a blood-drawing bite and I feel like I’m rubbernecking outside my body when the accident is me.

“Even now you’re so—compliant. I blow up our lives, I break up our marriage and I sell this house out from under you, and you just stand there and take it. You’re meek , Bryce. You convince yourself it’s because you’re nice but really it’s because you don’t have the backbone for anything else.”

Her blue eyes are bloodshot, tears gathering, but all I see is anger and all I feel is her rage as her voice hits my body.

“My father gave you a job at the company and still you didn’t progress.

Even with nepotism on your side you were content to sit back and let everyone else make the decisions.

So, I decided. I decided for us because you sure as hell weren’t going to.

You can’t pretend nothing was wrong. You’re a coward but you’re not stupid. ”

Little pieces were wrong, one or two missing from the puzzle, but nothing catastrophic enough that I couldn’t still make out the picture. Maybe I was the only one building the puzzle. Maybe Steph wasn’t even in the same room.

“I was trying to be stable, dependable.” It sounds pathetic even to me.

“I didn’t marry a fucking dining room table. I needed more from you.” The curse word hits me harder than I expect, neither of us prone to swearing—Steph even less so since she considers it “crass.”

The sun shifts across the floor, the cream fading to something closer to beige and some of her face is in shadow now, unreadable.

“Then why didn’t you say something?”

“I did . Every day. It may not have been overt but I asked in all the ways I could. Sending you job applications for positions a little better and mentioning all the places I wanted to go to dinner at where you could have dressed up a little. Anything I could think to force you to be more, to be bigger, to be a better man.”

Adrenaline is the only thing keeping me standing. But it can only do so much and if this carries on any longer I’ll be dropping onto my knees with the weight of this feeling.

“I . . . didn’t know. I was just—the man you married.”

I was who I have always been and if I had less pain and more impartiality I might be able to ask why she was okay with it then but has only been wanting to change me since.

The truth settles between us, the fissure widening into a chasm of me not being what she wanted and her resentful that she couldn’t melt and meld me into someone I’m just not.

Something flashes across her face and I know what I’ve said just screwed whatever “amicable” thing she thought we could be in her mind.

I’ve cast my own blame and Steph has never been able to take as good as she gives.

“And now you’re just the man I divorced.”

She turns on her heel and I wait twenty seconds. Keys jingle as she pulls them from her bag. Footsteps get quieter until they’re gone, the exclamation of her last word reverberating through the sound of the front door slamming.

Moving on autopilot, I walk off the fluffy carpet, each step down the stairs feeling heavier than the last. Spinning around one last time at the bottom, I can barely see who we used to be here.

Someone else will move in and paint over the chip from my DIY mishap a year ago.

The scuffs by the front door from my shoes will be buffed into nothingness.

And Stephanie won’t think twice about it—or me. Perhaps I should be the same.

Closure isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

I shut the front door behind me and turn to lock it before I realize I no longer have the key for this place. We had to turn in our copies when we signed the final paperwork and released all our assets to be divided. Stephanie must have gotten a new copy or asked permission to use an old one.

Maybe she kept a spare and didn’t tell them.

There’s nothing I can do though but hope no one trashes the place. Then again, perhaps they should. Settling into my car, my headlights flicking on and bathing the front door in white, all I feel is empty.

Leaving Philly now. I’ll be back in Dulaney in around two and a half hours.

I send the text to both my parents and my best friend, Logan, like I promised, before I ease out of my old driveway and onto the road.

The radio is set to nothing, snippets of songs and talking cutting between static and white noise but I don’t care enough to fix it. The drive between Philadelphia and Dulaney is broken up by stations fading in and out—country and talk, and then finally 97.9FM Dulaney’s hits station.

My indicator clicks as I wait for a row of cars to pass so I can turn into South Grove and night has swallowed the neighborhood I grew up in. Even without the sun, memory guides me despite the changes over the years.

The Baker’s big tree in their front yard is gone.

The Niebecker’s house has new siding, much darker than before.

The only consolation to me now is how “same” my parents’ home looks, even after the last few years.

Steph hated coming here so my parents usually came to us.

It’s been two Christmasses since I was home in Dulaney.

My headlights flick off, hands gripped around the steering wheel so tight for so long they’ve gone a little numb, same as my ass.

The motion detector by the back door floods the yard as my dad slips out of the kitchen door to let me into the garage.

His little wave sends a twinge through my chest and although his smile is balm on my soul the lines sweeping out beside his eyes and mouth at the motion are less familiar.

He’s older than I pictured him in my mind. I forget how that happens. The years don’t just affect me but them as well. My father’s forehead creases when he catches sight of me, bushy salt and pepper brows fixing down over the quiet brown eyes I inherited from him.

I shut the car door. The garage still smells vaguely of oil and engine even though he keeps it pristine. My father gathers me into a huge hug and ushers me into the house as if I’m a stray animal he’s decided to keep, one he’s worried will strike out at any moment.

My mom’s in pajamas. If I know them at all they’ve been sitting on the sofa trying to stay awake past their 8 p.m. bedtime, and just listening for the sound of my car turning up into the drive.

Her kiss is kind on my scruffy cheek and I’ll need to shave soon.

Steph always preferred me clean-shaven so I’ve been letting it go until it starts to irritate me and then trimming it, but not clean. Not anymore.

“We’ve turned your room into a guest room/sewing room since you were last here, and you can sleep there as long as you like. But we have the garage apartment set up for you to settle your things in whenever you’re ready.” My mom looks like she has more to say but thinks better of it.

I’m weary. My body aches in a way it hasn’t before.

Fatigue leaves me feeling far older than I should and apathy hardens like cement in my veins, sapping me even further.

But I can’t let the day end like this. Thirty looming ahead of me—a milestone that was supposed to mean I had it all together—and all I have to show for it is me falling apart.

“Thanks.”

I trudge up the stairs, my hand on the wooden bannister to help hold me up when all I want is to sleep for a week straight. It smells the same, welcome and forgotten, and everything I never needed until right now.

My mom’s perfume and her scented tea candles follow me up the stairs.

The bedding in the guest room smells like the detergent they’ve used all my life and I want to breathe it in until my chest loosens around my stone heart.

Instead, I stare up at the ceiling still fully dressed.

Night washes over the room, only the barest of impressions of furniture around me in the dark.

A golden sliver breaks up the black from under the door.

The hall light is on and my parents putter through their evening routine.

With the threat of an entire existential crisis looming, I check my phone.

Logan

Come out with us tonight! It’s half-off draft night. You’re home.

You deserve to get away from it for a bit.

I can’t sleep. It’s too early anyway, even though I haven’t slept well in months. So although I don’t feel like it and the idea of having to recap my failed marriage to my high school best friend fills me with dread, lying here is worse.

Where and when?

It’s barely a few minutes before I get a response.

I’ll pick you up and play DD so you can actually loosen up. Be ready.