He read it standing up. Like sitting would make it too real.
I watched from the kitchen table – still in his shirt, the Saturday morning we'd built dismantling itself one sentence at a time. He held the letter with both hands. Two pages. Cream paper. The heavy, textured kind you buy on purpose – the stationery of a woman who wanted this to feel permanent.
His eyes moved across the words slowly. Not because he couldn't read fast – because each line was costing him something and he was paying in real time. I could see it in his face. The micro-shifts. Jaw tightening on one sentence. Loosening on the next. A swallow that took too long. A breath that came too short. Nine years of abandonment cycling across his features like weather – storm, clearing, storm again.
I didn't read the letter. D
