“I didn’t want him explaining me.”

“Then maybe you shouldn’t have asked him to explain after you walked away.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“The truth.”

He stared at me for a moment.

“Were you going to leave me?”

My stomach tightened.

I looked away.

Theo noticed immediately.

“So there was something.”

I folded my arms.

“What did you find?”

“During the insurance dispute, you asked me to search your email for legal paperwork. I searched the word ‘legal.’ A confirmation for a consultation appeared.”

My stomach dropped.

“Theo…”

“Three days before my diagnosis.”

“It was only a consultation.”

He gave a bitter laugh.

“Thank God. For a second I thought my wife wanted a divorce.”

I looked away again.

That was the problem with buried truths.

They waited.

“Why didn’t you ask me?”

“When, Ali?”

His voice rose.

“When I was throwing up after treatment? When you were sleeping three hours a day? When neither of us knew whether I’d still be alive six months later?”

“You had eleven months.”

“And for eleven months, I kept asking myself the same question.”

“What question?”

“Whether you’d still be here if I wasn’t sick.”

“That’s not fair, Theo.”

“Neither was finding out you were thinking about leaving me.”

Something inside me finally gave way.

“You’re right.”

Theo went silent.

“I was thinking about leaving.”

His face changed.

I forced myself to keep going, because stopping would mean doing what I had always done—swallowing difficult feelings, cleaning the kitchen, answering another email, and pretending silence meant peace.

“I didn’t hate you, Theo. I felt invisible.”

“That’s not true.”

“Do you remember our anniversary?”

He looked down.

“I was working.”

“I sat alone at that restaurant for more than an hour.”

“I apologized.”

“You sent me one word.”

I could still remember the untouched place setting across from me and myself repeatedly telling the server,

“He’s coming.”

He never came.

That night, sitting alone in my car, I searched for divorce attorneys.

Theo had never been cruel. In some ways, cruelty would have been easier to understand.

He had simply stopped noticing me.

A week before that anniversary, I had told him,

“I miss you.”

He barely looked away from his phone.

“I’m right here.”

After that, I stopped trying.

Then cancer arrived, and suddenly there was no room left for pretending.

“You got sick, and somehow we started talking again.”

“About treatment.”

“About everything. We laughed again.”

“Because everything was terrible.”

“You reached for me again.”

“Because I needed you.”

I stepped closer.

“You’re turning every good thing we found during those months into a symptom of your illness.”

His eyes filled.

“You were leaving me.”

“Yes. I was thinking about it. But then I almost lost you.”

“And that made you feel guilty.”

“No.”

“How do I know?”

I opened my mouth.

Nothing came out.

So I left.

My mother, Lydia, opened her front door wearing slippers and an old green cardigan. When she saw my face, she didn’t ask questions. She simply opened the door wider.

“Tea?”

I nodded.

Five minutes later, I sat at her kitchen table holding a warm mug between both hands.

“Do you want me to tell you what to do?”

“No.”

“Good. Because I have absolutely no idea.”

I almost laughed.

Then I told her everything.

When I finished, she reached across the table and touched my wrist.

“You can love someone and still be unhappy with the life you’ve created together.”

“What if Theo was right?”

“About what?”

“What if I stayed because he needed me?”

Mom leaned back.

“I can’t answer that for you.”

I hated the answer because it was honest.

Then she studied me.

“You’ve been saying ‘I’ve got it’ since you were twelve.”

“I don’t say that that often.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“Fine. Maybe I do.”

“Sometimes you say it so quickly that nobody gets the chance to offer help.”

I stared into my tea.

“When someone needs you, you run toward them. You always have.”

My throat tightened.

“The harder question is what you do when they don’t need you.”

Driving home later, I finally admitted something uncomfortable.

I had liked being needed.

Before Theo became sick, I never knew where I stood with him. During treatment, I always knew.

When he was nauseated, he called for me. When he was frightened, he reached for me. When something went wrong, I was the first person he wanted.

For the first time in years, I felt essential.

And somewhere along the way, being needed had begun to feel dangerously similar to being loved.

Maybe Theo and I were both right about parts of the story.

When I returned home, his duffel bag was still beside the door.

“Where did you go?”

“Mom’s.”

I walked into the bedroom and pulled my suitcase from the closet.

Theo followed.

“What are you doing?”

“Packing enough clothes for a few days.”

“I thought you wanted me to stay.”

I placed the suitcase on the bed.

“I did. Then I spent an hour asking myself why.”

His expression tightened.

“And?”

“I don’t know what I want anymore.”

He stepped into the room.

“Alicia, I didn’t ask for a divorce because I stopped caring about you.”

“No. You asked because you decided you understood my feelings better than I did.”

I folded a sweater and placed it inside.

“If you want the divorce, I won’t stop you.”

Theo stared at me.

“You’re just walking away?”

“I’m stopping something I’ve been doing for years.”

“What?”

“Trying to make myself useful enough that nobody leaves me.”

He sat on the edge of the bed.

I kept packing.

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