ELARA
The room was very quiet. Outside, someone in the hallway was pushing a cart, the wheels making their soft institutional sound. The talk show on the television had given way to the news, the volume so low it was just texture.
"And you?" She looked at me. "Do you like him?"
I didn't know where to start unpacking it, and in the two seconds I spent deciding, something must have moved across my face, because Mary tilted her head.
"You're trying to decide how to tell me something," she said.
I looked at the rug. The same Persian rug I'd stared at through a hundred difficult conversations in this room, its pattern of medallions and arabesques worn smooth at the center from decades of foot traffic. "I'm getting a divorce," I said. "I've already told him. It's—" I paused. "It's decided."
