"Goodnight, Thomas."
I said it like a period at the end of a sentence I never wanted to write.
He lingered for a moment on the doorstep, eyes searching mine like he wanted to say something more—fix something, maybe. But I didn't flinch. I didn't soften. I just stepped inside and closed the door behind me.
The click of the lock echoed through the house, sharp and final. I stood there for a second—maybe longer. Still. Hollow. Like someone had scooped out everything soft inside me and left only skin and bone behind.
My therapist said I needed to find meaning outside of being a wife. That it was time to rediscover who I was without Thomas. But the truth is...I don't know who that is.
I fell in love with him when I was still learning how to be a person. A teenager in a hoodie and heartbreak, sure of only one thing in the entire world: him. And that love? It grew like ivy. It wrapped around me. Defined me. Became the way I saw myself.
And now?
Now I felt like a house with no lights on. The walls were still there. The shape was familiar. But everything inside was dark and unfamiliar. Uninviting. Empty.
I didn't realize I was trembling until I felt the small, steady hand on my arm. I turned.
Jimmy looked up at me, his face soft with sleep, but his eyes sharper than any fourteen-year-old's had a right to be.
"We'll be okay, Mom," he said. Just six little words—but they held me up like scaffolding. Like truth.
And just like that... the lights flickered back on.
I pulled him close and kissed the top of his head, breathing him in—apple shampoo and courage. "How could we not be, when I have an angel for a son? Go to bed, sweetheart." He gave a sleepy nod and padded off down the hall, dragging his blanket behind him like a knight retreating after battle.
I watched him until he disappeared into his room. Then I stayed by the door, the silence humming all around me, and let myself feel it all.
The grief. The relief. The fragile hope blooming in the rubble. Maybe I didn't know exactly who I was without Thomas yet.
But I knew who I was with Jimmy. And for now, that was enough.
*
The doorbell rang just as I was rinsing out the chili pot. I wiped my hands on a towel, already halfway to the door when I peeked through the window.
And then I froze. It was them. My heartbeat stuttered, then galloped. I yanked the door open so fast it slammed into the wall behind me—but I didn't care.
"Mom!" I all but launched myself into her arms the second the door opened. Her coat was still half-on, and her suitcase bumped into my ankle, but none of it mattered. Her perfume—faint lavender and freshly washed linen—hit me like muscle memory. A scent from childhood. A safe space in the storm.
I buried my face into her shoulder, fists clutching the back of her jacket, and for one beautiful, shattering moment... I wasn't a grown woman spiraling through a divorce. I was a little girl who scraped her knee on the driveway and needed her mom to kiss it better.
Safe. Held. Home.
Her arms wrapped around me tightly, no questions asked, just a steady hand at the nape of my neck and a soft, "Oh, sweetheart..."
My chest crumpled. I didn't mean to start crying, but I couldn't stop it. The tears came fast, hot, full of everything I'd been keeping sealed up for weeks. The weight of pretending. The ache of being left. The quiet unraveling I didn't want anyone to see.