Chapter 6 - What the Counselor Asked
Our counselor’s office had a crooked painting of a lake and a clock that ticked loudly whenever neither of us wanted to speak.
Her name was Dr. Mercer.
She listened to Brandon explain that he had loved Jordan deeply, lost her suddenly, and then met me before he understood what grief was doing to him.
She listened to me describe the hospital.
Then she asked him one question.
“What did you believe Hannah would do if she had the full truth?”
Brandon looked at his hands.
“Leave.”
“And what did you do with that fear?”
“I hid things.”
Dr. Mercer nodded.
“So the work is not simply explaining how sad you were.”
He looked up.
“It is learning why your fear became permission to control someone else’s choices.”
I sat back.
For weeks, people had tried to make this about whether grief excused him.
She had moved the conversation somewhere I could finally breathe.
During the next session, Brandon brought a written timeline.
He and Jordan had dated through their twenties. They had become engaged shortly before her death. He had met me two months afterward and convinced himself that feeling happy meant he was ready.
He had intended to tell me.
Then I became important.
Then telling me risked losing me.
Then we were engaged, and he thought the truth would make me question everything.
“Did you ever compare us?” I asked.
He closed his eyes.
“Yes.”
The honesty hurt more than a quick denial would have.
“How?”
“Not the way you think.”
“You don’t know what I think.”
He nodded.
“Sometimes I compared how I felt. I thought love was supposed to feel exactly the same.”
“And when it didn’t?”
“I panicked. Then I told myself being with you felt calmer because I’d grown up.”
I looked at the lake painting.
I had spent years proud of the safety we gave each other.
Now I wondered whether I had mistaken his avoidance for peace.
Dr. Mercer let us sit with it.
Later, she asked me what repair would require.
“Access to our finances. No secret agreements with his mother. The truth about Jordan without being punished for asking. And I need to stop being expected to understand everyone while nobody considers me.”
Brandon wrote each item down.
He began individual grief counseling.
He moved into a short-term apartment so JJ and I could return home without pretending the marriage was fixed.
We created a parenting schedule.
On his nights, he sent photographs of bedtime books, not messages about how lonely he was.
Small things changed.
He told Diane she could not enter our house with her spare key.
He asked her to communicate with him instead of sending criticism through Kelsey.
He gave me full access to every household account.
Then he did something that frightened me more than any argument.
He became patient.
For several weeks, I began to hope.
We took JJ to a park one Sunday. Brandon brought sandwiches with the crusts still on because our child remained committed to being strange about bread.
We laughed when a goose chased him away from a picnic bench.
On the drive home, I almost reached for his hand.
That night, JJ asked whether he had another mommy.
I froze beside his bed.
“What makes you ask that?”
“Grandma said Daddy loved Jordan first. But I’m Jordan.”
His small forehead creased.
“She said I keep her here.”
I sat down carefully.
“Sweetheart, you only have to be you.”
“Did she go away because I came?”
“No.”
I pulled him close.
“No, baby. She died a long time before you were born. You didn’t make anything happen.”
After he slept, I called Brandon.
He listened without speaking.
“I’ll handle Mom.”
I gripped the phone.
“That phrase doesn’t reassure me anymore.”
“I know.”
The next morning, he told Diane visits would pause until she could respect the boundaries we had set.
She called me cruel.
He did not ask me to answer.
But that evening, I sat alone at the kitchen table and understood something I had avoided.
May you like
Brandon might change.
That did not mean I would feel safe enough to remain his wife.
