Chapter 6 - When the Fantasy Collapsed
The first time I visited the Briar Theater, rainwater was dripping into popcorn buckets arranged across the lobby.
Nora stood beneath a faded mural, holding a flashlight.
“Before you say anything,” she told me, “the buckets are temporary.”
“How temporary?”
“The first one has been here since April.”
I looked up.
“That’s ambitious.”
She grinned.
The building had been closed for fourteen years. A neighborhood nonprofit had purchased it with donations and an optimism I found both alarming and familiar.
Nora wanted an estimate for restoring the lobby doors.
I spent two hours examining warped panels, failed repairs, and brass hardware someone had painted brown.
“Can you save them?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“How bad will the estimate be?”
“Do you want the comforting answer or the useful one?”
“The useful one.”
I liked that too.
When I returned to my truck, I had four missed calls from Lauren.
Her next message was only five words.
Please. I need to talk.
I called.
She answered on the first ring.
“My company put me on leave.”
I closed my eyes.
“Why?”
“Miles’s expenses. Some of our travel charges. They’re reviewing everything.”
I waited.
“He told me the extra hotel nights were approved.”
“Were they?”
“I didn’t ask.”
A train moved through the crossing ahead of me, carrying identical gray containers toward somewhere neither of us could see.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Are you?”
“Yes.”
She started crying.
I let her.
Then she said, “He’s saying I pursued him.”
I watched the train.
“He’s saying I misunderstood what we were. That he never promised me anything.”
I remembered the six months I would never get back.
I remembered chicken soup in glass containers.
“Did he put those promises in messages?”
“Yes.”
“Then speak to whoever is advising you. Keep your own records. Tell the truth.”
There was a pause.
“Can I come home?”
The question landed harder than I expected.
“To get anything you need, yes.”
“You know what I mean.”
I did.
That was the problem.
“I can’t make this better by pretending it didn’t happen.”
“I’m not asking you to pretend.”
“What are you asking?”
She didn’t answer immediately.
Finally, she said, “I don’t want to lose everything.”
I rested my forehead against the steering wheel.
For weeks, I had wanted her to understand what she had done.
Now she was beginning to understand, and the satisfaction I had imagined still wouldn’t come.
“You haven’t lost everything,” I told her. “You have your family. You have skills. You have choices.”
“I lost you.”
I let the silence stand.
Two days later, she asked to meet at a diner near her sister’s apartment.
She looked different without the confidence she used to wear like a tailored jacket.
No dramatic makeup.
No carefully rehearsed opening.
Just a tired woman holding a coffee cup with both hands.
“I resigned,” she said. “After the review. They found charges I should have questioned. I’m repaying my portion.”
“What about Miles?”
“His contract was ended. There were other complaints.”
She stared at her cup.
“I keep wanting to tell you he manipulated me.”
“Did he?”
“Yes.”
“Then that’s part of what happened.”
She looked up.
“But not all of it,” she said.
“No.”
She nodded slowly.
“I liked the person I thought I was with him. Important. Wanted. Chosen.”
“You were wanted at home.”
“I know.”
The waitress refilled our coffee.
Neither of us spoke until she left.
Then Lauren said, “I knew you’d be there. I treated that like it meant I didn’t have to keep choosing you.”
My throat tightened.
That was closer to an apology than anything she had said before.
It still wasn’t a bridge back.
“I’m going to therapy,” she added.
“I hope it helps.”
“You make that sound final.”
“It can be sincere and final.”
When I stood to leave, she reached for my wrist.
I stopped.
“Was there ever a moment you would have taken me back?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Before you decided I didn’t need a choice.”
She released me.
Outside, the air smelled like rain.
I drove to the theater, where Nora was waiting with paint samples and three terrible vending-machine sandwiches.
May you like
For the next four hours, we talked about doors.
That night, it was enough.
