I couldn’t believe it. The words coming out of Cora’s mouth just kept surprising me more and more, and the fact that she was slowly crying while saying them—it broke me. It wrecked something deep inside of me I didn’t even know was fragile until she cracked it wide open.
I’m leaving James.
That was the part I kept holding onto, the sentence that circled in my head like it was on repeat. Everything else she said blurred around me, rushing through one ear and out the other, like static. Normally, I was good at following Cora’s train of thought—she jumped around a lot, but I was used to it. I prided myself on keeping up with her, but in that moment, I couldn’t. My brain had stalled.
She told me about wanting kids. About how much she wanted to be a mom. Then, without pausing, she jumped int
