Chapter 2Enjoy The Life I Escaped From

In the life I left behind, we signed the papers and walked out of that office as husband and wife. We hadn't gone ten feet before he collided with a girl.

Her name was Rose. She was a local girl, the kind with wild hair and eyes that looked like they held secrets the mountains hadn't told anyone else.

On the drive back to the site, David was silent. I thought he was just being respectful, settling into his new role as a married man. I thought he was being "proper."

I didn’t find out until the very end that he wasn't being proper. He was mourning.

That one collision had been lightning. He’d fallen in love with Rose at first sight, right there on the courthouse steps with our marriage license still damp in his pocket. He wasn't avoiding other women for my sake; he was regretting me. He was cursing the fact that he hadn't waited just one more day to be free.

After that, the light in him went out whenever he looked at me. He spent hours staring toward the valley where Rose lived. When I asked him what was wrong, he’d snap at me or shut down. Eventually, I stopped asking. I threw myself into my work, thinking he just needed time to adjust to domestic life.

When the Montana project ended, we were assigned to different states. Long distance. I thought it was a temporary sacrifice for our careers. But every time a new contract came up, he was in Maine while I was in Texas. He was in Oregon while I was in Florida.

"It’s just how the firm assigned it, Nora," he’d say over the phone, his voice flat.

Years later, during a trip to the main office in Chicago, I overheard his colleagues talking. Every single "separation" had been requested by David. He was actively fleeing me.

We had a screaming match that night. He held me, sobbing, apologizing for things he wouldn't name. And then, the next morning, he was gone again.

I thought our marriage was over then. But life is cruel—I found out I was pregnant.

When I told him, he changed. He became the perfect husband. He moved back. He cooked for me, he pressed his ear to my stomach to listen to the baby, he walked me through the park every evening. I thought I’d finally won.

Then, one Tuesday, he went out for milk and never came back.

I spent twenty years looking for him. I raised our son alone. I worked two jobs. I buried my parents and his parents. I assumed he was dead.

But when my heart started failing at forty-five, he appeared at my bedside. He’d been with Rose the whole time. They’d moved to a small town in Vermont and adopted a son. They gave that boy everything—all the love and presence he’d denied our biological son.

The only reason he came back was that Rose had died of a broken heart, her only regret being that she was never legally his wife.

David told me he was sorry, but he also said he resented me. He blamed me for being the "legal" obstacle that kept Rose from her dying wish.

I wanted to scream. If you didn't love me, why didn't you just leave? Why didn't you ask for a divorce? Why leave me to rot in the uncertainty of a "missing" husband while you played house with her?

And the final twist of the knife? My own son, the one I’d sacrificed my health to raise, told me he envied the boy David had adopted. He told me he’d been in contact with his father for years. He’d kept David’s secret while I spent my nights weeping over old photos.