The Seat He Saved for Me
Chapter 16 - The Seat He Saved for Me
Eli played a tree.
He had one line.
He delivered it too loudly.
I applauded as if he had just finished Hamlet.
Grant sat two seats away.
Hannah sat between us.
There was something strange and beautiful about it.
The wife.
The woman from Savannah.
The man who had failed both of us in different ways.
And the boy who had forced all of us into the truth.
After the play, Eli ran toward me first.
"Did you hear my line?"
"The people in the next county heard it."
He grinned.
Grant laughed.
Then Eli gave me a folded piece of paper.
For one terrifying second, I thought about the napkin at the restaurant.
This time it was a drawing.
Four people.
Hannah.
Grant.
Eli.
Me.
I pointed at my stick figure.
"Why am I so tall?"
"Because you're the boss."
Hannah nearly choked laughing.
Grant wisely said nothing.
On the drive home, I realized I was smiling.
Not because my marriage was fixed.
It wasn't.
Not because I'd forgotten.
I hadn't.
I was smiling because my life had become larger than the betrayal.
That realization changed me.
I reopened the small interior design studio I'd closed after Lily died.
I took clients again.
I traveled.
I learned that solitude was not the same as loneliness.
Grant found work with a smaller development firm.
No family name.
No inherited office.
No mother on the board.
He started over.
So did we.
Slowly.
Coffee once a week.
Then dinner.
Then counseling.
There were terrible conversations.
There were good ones.
There were days I wanted my old marriage back.
Then I remembered the old marriage had been built with a locked room inside it.
I didn't want it back.
I wanted something new.
One evening, almost a year after our anniversary dinner, Grant walked me to my car.
"Can I ask you something?"
"Depends."
"Do you still love me?"
I looked at him.
The truthful answer frightened me.
"Yes."
Hope flashed across his face.
I raised a hand.
"But love isn't the question anymore."
He nodded slowly.
"I know."
"The question is whether I trust who you're becoming."
"And?"
I opened my car door.
"I'm still watching."
He smiled.
"Fair enough."
May you like
I drove away.
For once, neither of us needed an answer immediately.
