Work Text:
"I think Bill's avoiding me," Katie said evenly, out loud over brunch.
It landed awkwardly between them, the elephant in the room she didn't know how to address. She barely knew how to put it in words that made sense. Marley looked up, sharply, from tearing into her bruschetta and eyed Katie's untouched plate, her listless hand holding the plastic fork, the badly-applied concealer Katie had slapped on at six this morning before her drive to the airport to pick her sister up.
"What makes you say that," Marley said, very carefully. The expression on her face landed somewhere between neutral and wary. Katie could understand the concern. "I thought you guys were going great?"
"We were," Katie said. "I—" she hesitated. The words clogged in her throat and died there. "I think I'm going crazy."
The frown on Marley's face intensified, and Katie immediately felt guilty—she hadn't hid anything from Bill in damn near a decade, but at this point, it wasn't so much hiding when he wasn't around to see it.
"You think he's having an affair?" Marley asked. It was a logical question, but still Katie bristled. She considered it, and then shook her head.
"Bill's barely capable of lying about having done the dishes," she said. "I would know if he'd had an affair, I promise you."
Bill was always a terrible liar. It was why Katie'd fallen for him in the first place—he cared, but he wasn't shy about it, and didn't care to lie or be coy about anything because he was secure enough in himself to not do that. His style of dishonesty only looked like badly baked attempts at avoidance, because in truth that was all he was capable of, and Katie knew him so well that she'd see through all his attempts.
Most of them, anyway.
There was that time that Bill came home late, so late that Katie had fallen asleep on the couch waiting up for him, nearly out of her mind with worry and yet Bill had walked through that door hearty and hale and safe. He was supposed to be safe. And when she'd asked where the hell he'd been, why he hadn't answered his phone, he'd just shaken his head.
She'd never found out where he'd gone—every so often he'd just disappear, just like that, and come home way past eleven and refuse to answer any questions. Classified. Katie's frustration amounted to nothing against his stubbornness.
"I mean," tried Marley, because she really did mean well even if Katie knew it was unfounded—"Have you gone through his phone?"
"It's classified, Mar," Katie pointed out. "I couldn't, even if I wanted to."
"Doesn't he have a work phone?"
"You'd think," Katie said, dryly. "Bill's a technophobe. He hates the idea of getting a separate phone—he argued with his boss for so long they just gave up."
"You're marrying an old man," Marley muttered under her breath, and then took a bite of her bruschetta. Katie poked the cooling lasagne on her plate and privately agreed.
See, it wasn't so much avoiding as much as Bill simply wasn't there anymore. Alright. His job was intense; Bill was liaison to a lot of national security and was handling sensitive government matters that even he wasn't allowed to talk about in the privacy of his own home, should Katie ask—not that Katie would, of course, but it was the principle of the thing. Came with the territory of working for the FBI.
They'd moved into a house together, a whole year after Katie proposed. Rings she'd had to hide from him at her sister's house, because god knows Bill just has a sixth sense for anything she tried to keep away from him—that kind of natural intuition that probably made him a great government agent, but a terrible boyfriend sometimes.
She would rather die than have him beat her to the punch. So she'd popped the question first with a little help from Marley and Bill's mom, Helena, because Bill's mom always knew what made her son tick when even Katie was stumped—and in this case, how to propose to the world's worst workaholic. In the end, they'd settled on something with no-frills, no-drama, probably the most unromantic thing Katie has ever seen next to her own father's wedding to his second wife. Katie took the rings—plain golden things, because neither of them were overtly flashy people—and an unfilled application for a marriage license and slid them across the table at dinner.
"Marry me," she'd said, in Bill's apartment that was more a home for Katie than her own place across town that was slowly gathering dust. Her boots rested in the footwell and she had her own entire cabinet here, and a permanent place at the dining table, and her keys rested next to Bill's in the bowl he kept next to the entryway.
Bill had dropped his fork. Katie hadn't cried when she filed the application for them, and Bill had. It was stuff like that that made them work so well in the first place—Katie suspected she knew him more intimately and more familiar than he did himself, sometimes, but he also knew her.
The thing was, another whole year later—in their big, shared house, and Katie stopped seeing Bill as often when they weren't officially living together.
Their house was a simple plasterboard affair that Katie'd found for them off Zillow, white walls and a dark blue roof and three bedrooms. One they'd turned into a joint study, because Katie needed space for all her books and Bill needed a whole filing cabinet just to himself—and between the two of them, they'd worked out a filing system that made a semi amount sort of sense. The walls stretching across their joint study were blue on the east side—Katie's side was the side that got the most sun—and Bill got the dark grey walls, the side without a window and the most room to plaster his over-filled cabinets. Katie liked to leave the window open and let the sunrise in when she worked from home (which was most days, really, since she had no need to go into the lab much in the last stages of her thesis) and Bill rarely worked from home; so it worked. They had matching dark wood furniture and a mutually shared coffee machine.
So utterly domestic that it made her teeth hurt, sometimes. But Bill worked seven to six pm most days and Katie kept irregular hours; and the subject of their most frequent arguments were his absences and Katie refusing to show up when he was available, because she wouldn't suffer changes to her set routine that she'd kept for years when they were just dating fresh out of law school. And Katie knew Bill: he was as stubborn and hard-headed as she was, and genuinely cared about what he was doing—saving lives, working to make a genuine difference in that fancy office of his, and so she wouldn't ask him for more than he was able to give.
That was the problem. She saw her therapist more than she saw Bill, some weeks. Katie knew it was a big damn house, but sometimes she woke up and the bed was cold and she'd wander downstairs and make herself breakfast because Bill could barely be assed to cook—not just for her, but for himself. Bill was competent at it—like he was, with most things—but most of the time he was too tired to even bother. One time, Katie woke up from a nap and walked into the kitchen to see Bill half-asleep over a slowly burning pot of pasta; which wound up being utterly unsalvageable. Katie had their favorite Thai place's number written on a post-it on their fridge for a reason.
It hurt, in a vague sort of way, because Katie didn't really think about him as much as she used to. She'd grown used to it. The silences broken up only by his intermittent texts from the office—not as frequent as they used to be, again, back when they just started dating—and Katie's own lackluster attempts at keeping up a thread of communication.
The one thing they agreed on was date nights on Saturday, and dinner every night at seven. Lately, even that had changed: Bill was always busy. He'd come home late, every other night, looking exhausted and miserable and the sort of quiet that Katie would normally associate with guilt. She'd long stopped asking—he wouldn't be able to say, anyway, and he wouldn't want to even if he could—and Bill stopped talking about work, period, even about the things that didn't really matter; like his coworkers or his boss's attitude or whatever deadline they'd given him on a mysterious project he'd carefully skirt around as if it would dismiss the elephant in the room.
Yeah. The months ticked by, and Katie busied herself with PHD work, pilates, new recipes—anything, so long as it kept Bill's sudden absence away from her mind.
When one door closes, another window opens. Or something. That sounded like something her mom would say.
The key clicked in the lock at eight past twelve. Katie startled awake from her position on the couch, having fallen asleep—again, for the third time this week—watching Real Housewives and getting overly invested. Again.
The glass of wine on the coffee table told her she'd probably wake up tomorrow and regret everything, for the hundredth time, because Katie's not eighteen anymore and her tolerance had dipped significantly ever since she started going steady on the Wellbutrin. She's not even supposed to drink period, but after a lot of debate with Dr. Maruki he'd eventually explained that one glass was all she was allowed to have, if she so wished.
She'd had two, tonight. The finest pinot grigio her PHD grant allowed her to have, which was saying a lot.
"Katie?" Bill's voice echoed in the hallway. Katie leaned her head against the back of the couch, looking directly at the ceiling, and breathed through her nose softly. Even a whole seven years couldn't delete the way his voice seemed to magnetize her from her brain—it was always just like the first time, every time. Even when she was mad at him. It made it really fucking hard to be angry at him—like a reverse halo effect.
"Hi, honey," she said, flatly. Bill's tousled red hair came into her view. "How was work?"
"What are you doing out here in the living room?" Bill frowned, the ever-present furrow in between his eyebrows intensifying. "It's twelve, sweetheart, you've gotta be up tomorrow for that meeting with your advisor."
Katie's well aware. She wrote it into their shared Google calendar, for godssakes. But Bill's always been a worrier. "Just wanted to see you before I went," she muttered. She patted the seat next to her, and he sat down—her bare thigh brushing against his pressed slacks, the red basketball shorts and hoodie she wore a stark contrast against his suit. Hell, Bill hadn't even ditched the blazer yet. "Seriously," she continued, brushing against his forearm deliberately, "Work?"
"Colin," was all Bill said. "Guy's… really fucking weird, Katie."
Ah. "Weird how," Katie asked.
"He's covering for somebody, I think," Bill said. "But that doesn't make sense. Colin's not… a bad guy, just kinda strange and a little misanthropic."
"Isn't that the kind of guy you want on your side?"
"Yeah," Bill murmured, and then his gaze dropped from hers. Fixed itself on the screen—still running a muted version of Real Housewives. On screen, Gabby's mouth opened in an exaggerated, comical version of shock, and her poufed hairdo bounced as she started gesturing animatedly in what Katie was sure was supposed to be anger. "I dunno. Look, let me shower, and we'll both go to bed?"
Katie could see an out when she saw it. She blinked, slow, and smiled—and tried to inject enough truth in it so it felt real. Duchenne smiles and all that. "Yeah, sure," she said, standing up—swaying a little. He steadied her with an arm and a frown, but she shook him off. "I'll see you in bed, handsome."
It was only when she slid between the sheets and heard the shower run that she'd remembered that she'd forgotten the wineglass on the coffee table. Fuck.
Bill had, once—exactly once—not come home at all. She'd picked up her phone at half past seven when she sat down to eat her dinner of cold gravy and vegetable fritters (Jane from pilates recommended the recipe to her, which she'd only been making ever since Bill started staying at work late) and noticed the text flash across her home screen.
Be home tomorrow. Working on a project overnight. Staying at Colin's. Critical stuff—I'll update you when I'm free. Love you.
Love you. She'd hovered her thumbs over the keyboard, and decided it was safer not to respond at all. When he'd eventually come home, she'd woken up to him next to her—dead to the fucking world at four in the morning. Holding her close, she could smell the aftershave on him—something that was different to the one he normally used, all spice and woodsmoke compared to his neutral bland cologne. It was subtle, but she noticed.
And underneath that was the faint smell of antiseptic.
She would have bet on him staying at a motel or something if she wasn't so irrationally afraid that he'd been hurt that she'd laid awake in fear for several hours before eventually passing back out. Katie had woken up to the sun streaming in from open blinds, a note on the bedside table and an empty bed.
Love you. Left lunch in the fridge for you—so you don't have to cook today. Consider it my apology.
He's getting good at the disappearing act, Katie'd thought, and then she'd put the note in the bin while getting the grilled Reuben out from the fridge.
Colin, as far as Katie was aware of, was just some coworker of Bill's that Bill didn't like in that hazy way you did when you think someone's kind of annoying but you have to work with them anyway, or when you're forced into cooperating with them even though you'd literally rather do anything else. Katie could relate. She'd had a few of those back in her grad student days. Bill didn't really hate anyone—murderers and criminals aside, probably—but annoyance and mild dislike, he had in spades.
The thing was, he just wouldn't stop talking about Colin. One morning she'd woken up to Bill leaving the house, normal as ever, and then the next she was sitting at dinner being regaled with how infuriating Colin was at everything, pretty much.
And Katie liked to think she was a patient person. One of the other reasons she and Bill got on so well like a house on fire: they hated the same things, and they were vocal about it. They were interested in the same things and had the same personality subtypes, according to the personality test that Katie had taken at four am while drunk out of her mind several years ago. But Bill talked so much about Colin that Katie's starting to suspect that he didn't know he was doing it.
She'd brought it up once. And Bill had stared at her, and gone quiet; lost in the recesses of his mind while Katie struggled to carry the conversation. She hadn't mentioned it again, but every so often she saw him—just working, or pouring himself another cup of tea, and staring at his phone with that furrowed-lost-lamb look. It was worse, because for the first time in seven years she didn't know what was going on in his mind.
"So you're having communication troubles?" Dr. Maruki said, furrowing his eyebrows.
Katie really wished that sometimes, Dr. Maruki was a little less direct. They got on well because he was direct, and confronted her issues head-on—didn't fuck around and give her well-meaning, wishy-washy answers she was used to, and respected her mind even though it had always been more prone to over-analysing everything she did. Katie was a scientist, through and through, and it showed in the logical way she outlined her life: neat, rigorous little boxes, compartmentalizing her emotions as efficiently as she did her files.
"I think Bill is just stressed," Katie said. "I can't help him because everything he does is classified. I feel like a military wife."
Dr. Maruki hummed. "When's the last time you worked on the wedding, by the way?"
Wasn't that a loaded question. "About half a year ago," Katie admitted.
It wasn't something she liked to publically talk about. Bill and her had gotten together after several years of friendship—grad school and law school and all the milestones in between—because Katie had enjoyed his friendship too much to even attempt on building on whatever was budding between them; and Bill was still dating his last girlfriend by the time Katie had realized that she wasn't feeling platonic feelings strictly as such, anymore. So by all means, they'd taken it slow: Katie had met his parents after a year, and Bill met Mrs Howitzer and her caretaker Jonah when Katie had finally admitted that her parents were divorced and she didn't see her dad anymore in the second year of their relationship.
There was no reason for their engagement to be different. Bill had signed all the forms she'd given him, and they'd received approval for that marriage license half a year ago—she'd told him so—but they still hadn't picked a date for their wedding. Katie can't even remember the last time they had sex.
Dr. Maruki tilted his head slightly, assessing. "Okay, and have you asked him about it, recently?"
"He's too busy right now," Katie said. "I'm happy to wait while he sorts out whatever national emergency the government's throwing at him."
"How long would you wait for?"
"Sorry?"
"Katie," he said, gently. "Your happiness also matters. So far you've spent two sessions just telling me how Bill's been struggling, and how he hasn't been home lately and you've been worried about him. If you haven't spoken recently to him about the future of your relationship, you should, because I know you spoke to me about your plans, correct?"
Katie stayed silent. Trust the professional to see directly to the core of things, even when she was all too tied up and jumbled in the corners of her mind to see the big picture. Dr. Maruki smiled, sympathetically, and tapped his pen against his clipboard twice.
"I won't assign you any homework this week," he said. "But remember: your happiness matters. Have a chat with Bill—that is the only way you will find out what he's really thinking."
Katie knew it was a big house. She'd seen it on the plans and on the Zillow page and on the contract she'd signed when they'd bought the damn thing. They had three bedrooms and two bathrooms and a second floor, and a garage that Bill parked his work car in and even a fucking shed. What the hell would she use a shed for? Katie's never stepped foot in it, assuming Bill would turn it into some kind of study or storage space, but it hadn't happened. Bill wasn't the handy type—and Katie was only slightly better in saying that she knew how to paint a wall and change a tire without his assistance. So.
Sometimes she felt like a stranger in her own house, creeping down the stairs and walking on the wooden floors in socks because her footsteps tended to echo in the hallways and she didn't want to disturb the eerily silent space when Bill was away. It wasn't necessarily a comfortable silence, but Katie had grown used to it.
She'd only signed the lease because Bill had agreed that it looked nice, and all the space was—in truth—because Katie wanted room. For herself, and for Bill, and for the family she wanted to have. They were both intensely independent people—Katie needed space as much as Bill did, sometimes, especially with the work they undertook—but Katie had been planning on talking to Bill about potentially turning the guest bedroom into a nursery.
A nursery. God. They weren't getting any younger and it wasn't like they had guests over often, anyway, and she'd always wanted a family. The idea was tantalizing. A house full of Goodman-Howitzers, screaming and crying and keeping Katie up at night, because it was a future she desperately wanted and was unsure how to make happen.
Katie's thirty-two this year. Bill is thirty-five and has brought up family, exactly once, on one of their dates years ago—Katie knows he's got siblings who have kids, and has witnessed how good he is with children—but he's never said anything about wanting his own.
And that is a conversation Katie's starting to waver on even trying to have. They're both really, really busy people—Marley had once compared it to a pair of beavers cohabitating in the same burrow—but Katie also knows that if they so wished, they would make time. Every milestone they've ever had, Bill has approached like a group project: coming to her with suggestions, making notes, drafting little memos to them both. It was incredibly unromantic and also endearing. Because Katie was also a freak like that, apparently.
Marley called them made for each other. Ha.
Bill probably wouldn't object to the nursery, even though it was a next step bigger than just getting married. The logistics alone would freak him out and she'd probably have to talk him off that ledge before he jumped the gun and started naming their children before she'd even signed off on it with her doctor. But the problem is, Katie thought, is whether he even wanted to. They're not even married yet.
With every day that passes, the ring on Katie's finger grows colder and colder.
"Bill," she asked, over breakfast. "Have you thought about the future, lately?"
Bill looked up from his bran flakes, hair in disarray because he hadn't had time to comb it yet. It's Sunday. Normally he'd call his mom directly after breakfast, but also run out and buy some groceries if it was his turn—this week, it was Katie's, but she hadn't even had time to formulate the list yet.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean," Katie said, fiddling with the hair tie on her wrist. "Have you thought about a date for our wedding yet?"
He froze. It was subtle, but Katie knew his tells—there was a muscle that jumped in his jaw when he was thinking real hard about something, especially if it was an answer that he knew she wouldn't like.
"Uh."
Katie could have guessed the response. She did calculate the odds, and she crunched the numbers, and yet. Sitting there, at the dinner table and eating the pancakes that Bill Goodman had cooked—once a future she'd barely been envision for herself, several years ago, when he'd been blindingly bright to her—and realizing that Bill hadn't even thought about their future when it kept her up at night; well. That still tore something in her chest. An age-old primal response, probably. Katie's not a biologist for a reason.
"Never mind," she said, drawing idle circles in her syrup with her fork. Internally, she rolled up all plans she'd designated and deposited it in the safebox of her mind without much fanfare.
She's always been a realist.
Bill shot her a concerned look, but didn't press. Katie pretended to be surprised when he left about an hour later—citing a quick errand for work—and didn't come back until four. By that time, she'd long since written that email to Dr. Maruki and then—another one—to Helena Goodman.
Mrs. Goodman is a seventy-four-year old woman with a personality that could move mountains and convince rivers to roll back in their beds. She's been the closest thing Katie's had for a mother figure in her life for close to three years, ever since Katie's mom—Jennifer—had been put in hospice care. Helena had lost her own husband to illness, recently, and Katie had been constantly in her corner over it—when Bill couldn't visit or fly out to see her, it was Katie who would.
It wasn't any small thing Katie was coming to her with. She didn't have any friends in her state—work colleagues, PHD buddies to commiserate in shared groupchats with, but none to go to over the truth of what she was going through. It was one thing to be coming to Helena with the question of asking for her son's hand in marriage and entirely another to be coming to Helena with questions of whether her son even loved her.
It could go so badly. It could go so terribly, Katie reasoned, her quad shot caramel macchiato at hand and her mouse hovering over the "FaceTime" button. Today she's not wearing her ring.
She hit call anyway. After a moment, Helena picked up—grey hair combed carefully away from her smiling face, and dressed down in a white shirt and wearing her glasses.
"Katie," she greeted, jovial even through Katie's shitty Macbook audio. Despite herself, Katie smiled.
"Hi, Mrs. Goodman."
"Helena is fine, and you know it." Helena's camera went shaky as she repositioned her phone somewhere—on the Goodmans' coffee table, perhaps? "What's this about, Katie?"
"I have a question to ask you," Katie said. "You know Bill. You know what he's like. I just—has he spoken to you recently?"
Helena's smile dimmed. "My girl, what's he done now?"
"Nothing." And wasn't that the problem. "I worry, I think. I feel as though he might—" she hesitated.
"Katie?"
"Bill has changed," Katie settled on, eventually. "He's not the Bill I used to know. And I think moving here was a mistake—he's constantly stressed, and I think work's getting to him, and he's never around anymore. We barely talk—when we do, we end up arguing, usually about something stupid."
She closed her mouth—that had been more honest than she'd hoped for. More bubbled at her lips, like how Bill was hiding things from her or the nebulous wedding that loomed somewhere in Katie's future or how she was starting to dread waking up and how she was very, very alone. She didn't feel like she could count on Bill anymore. Katie had moved from Michigan just to follow Bill and he had disappeared, slowly, quietly, from her life. She was engaged to a ghost.
Helena's silent for a long moment. Katie counted to three in her head. Inhale, exhale, just the way Dr. Maruki taught her.
"Katie," Helena said, eventually. "Are you happy? Is Bill happy?"
She'd always been just as direct as Katie was—no-bullshit, straight to the point.
Katie's had nightmares about this moment before. It was so much more damning than anything she'd ever imagined, the way that Helena looked at her—not judging, not surprised, as if she already knew the answer. "What if I said no?"
"Then," Helena said. "Think really long and hard about what you want. My son has always been tough-headed—like his father—and you've done a lot for him already. Believe me when I say that sometimes you cannot convince him to do something he doesn't want."
"I didn't think that applied to our marriage," Katie rasped. "Why aren't you talking me out of this?"
Helena half-smiled. "Katie, you're more than just blood. Your own happiness matters, as does my son's. I want you to think it through, honey."
Happiness. Isn't that what Katie's been chasing all this time? She's got everything she could have. A house, a man she loves and is about to marry, a good job that she's passionate about. She lives in New York, the city of dreams. Logically, how do you quantify happiness? Inversely—how do you do the reverse?
The Macbook screen got blurry as Katie scrubbed at the damp skin under her eye. Thank god for waterproof makeup, she thought, as she sniffed. "I don't know what to do," she whispered.
"What do you think you should do?"
"Talk to Bill," she said, instantly. "But I don't know how to have that conversation."
"Sweetheart," Helena spoke, gently. "You know Bill. I know Bill. I think only you can explain why you feel the way you do, and have him understand—and it's important that he does—because he will appreciate it more coming from you."
She's right. Katie does know Bill. Knows him like flesh and blood, knows him as a collection of facts and figures of data that she'd stored away in the recesses of her mind that she could graph if she chose to. Lately it hadn't felt like she knew him at all—change made him a stranger in her bed, until she could no longer see the fresh-faced law school graduate in his face.
It stung. Still, Helena had a point. "You're right," Katie half-laughed. It came out wet. "I just… wanted to tell you. At the end of this, you still have my number. I'll always come visit, Bill or no Bill."
At this, Helena cracked a smile. "Always, Katie. You're always welcome at home." Home. So far away, and yet.
In the end, it'd gone like this: Katie'd just finished calling Marley a scant number of minutes before Bill's key turned in the lock, the same sound that always had Katie turning towards the door.
She chugged the rest of her wineglass as quickly as she could—liquid courage, or something. It was filled to the brim with box wine—Katie wasn't spending more than sixty dollars on something she was drinking, not sipping, and it showed as the bitter taste washed down her gullet. She grimaced.
"Katie," Bill called, from the front door. "I'm home!"
"Welcome home," she called back, the instinctive back-and-forth they'd established themselves with as ingrained as the day was long.
Bill rounded the doorway into the main living room, the open floor plan giving Katie a perfect vantage point. He had come straight from work—his coat and scarf in disarray, his briefcase set against the couch, and the carefully pressed suit slightly wrinkled from his time on the subway.
Or so Katie thought. Katie's not really sure anymore what he's doing, nowadays.
Her hand started trembling on the marble.
Bill looked at her, and then at the empty wineglass—still with the dregs that Katie'd rather rinse out than put in her mouth—and frowned. "Babe, it's nine pm."
"Yeah," she responded, leaning further on the kitchen island. The marble was cold against her skin, and stood between her and Bill, who was looking more and more confused as time went on. "Hey, Bill. We need to talk."
"About what?"
"You should sit down for this," Katie patted one of the kitchen island stools. As tipsy as she was, she could still smell that aftershave on Bill as he got closer—not his own, and distinctly familiar in the way it was unfamiliar.
"You're scaring me," he said, softly. "Katie?"
A few years ago she would have done anything, given her right arm to hear him say her name in that voice. A few years ago she would have married him if he'd proposed with a damn Ring Pop. Her left hand's cold, bare against the marble—Bill hasn't appeared to have noticed, with the way his eyes are fixated on her face. Katie—is not going to cry. She will not.
"Bill," she said. "Do you still want to get married?"
"What? I—Of course? Katie?" His tone dipped into panic, and suddenly he was looking at her with a whole lot more than concern. "What's gotten into you?"
She was standing in the open kitchen under those damnably bright white spotlights Bill had insisted looked chic (but just washed him out) in her pajamas, halfway to being tipsy, and reconsidering the past decade of her life. What was it all for? She wasn't making any sense to herself. She lived in this good house and good life and she was pantomiming happiness with this man, with no one to see it other than him, and she suddenly—
"You aren't happy," Katie said.
"Of course I'm happy," Bill insisted. Katie looked down. He's not wearing his ring, either. Like this, Katie could almost pretend there wasn't any tie between them, nothing holding her from walking out the door and abandoning everything she knew.
She looked at him. There was a desperate tint to his expression, the brightness in his eyes growing as she locked gazes with him, and yet Katie didn't see the man she was in love with. Suddenly she was in the kitchen with a stranger that talked and walked like Bill, but wasn't Bill at all, and Katie realized that she couldn't go on like this. They couldn't go on like this.
She was a scientist. She could see logical conclusions and make the leap. There was something about Bill that had changed, fundamentally, and it would be doing them both a disservice to pretend like it hadn't.
"It's okay." Katie felt calm, a calm she hadn't felt since she'd woken up and realized Bill had fallen out of love with her. The alcohol might have a large part to do with it. "I understand, Bill."
"Katie," he said, almost too soft. She could see the dawning realization—and fear—in his eyes. What's he got to be afraid of, Katie thought, dully. He's not the one who has to change. "Are you saying—"
"I think," Katie said, "I should sleep in the guest bedroom tonight."
Bill's got that shattered look on his face, the same one he'd had when his dad died. Katie soldiered on.
"And tomorrow," she said, faster this time, because this was important, "let's talk to the realtors. Let's talk about what we're going to be doing. I think we're both unhappy, Bill, and I think—I think, this is it for us."
Silence fell in their kitchen, the cold white marble surrounding them like a tomb. And the finality with which Katie had driven that last point home—the surety she'd felt down to her bones—had seemed to finally sink in for Bill. "You're leaving me."
"Yes," Katie spoke, almost gently. "I think it's over, Bill."
"…Why?" His voice was plaintive, like a child's.
She didn't have an answer that would make sense to him—as he was, now, and not the Bill from a year ago. How fast had things gone sour? How badly had Katie wanted to lie to them both and pretend it was fine? It was almost worse than if he'd just been seeing someone else. That way, Katie could get drunk and move out and put that entire chapter behind her because it had, at least, been justified. To leave on the idea that she'd just stopped loving him—and vice versa—didn't seem right to her.
Because Bill hadn't done anything wrong. She hadn't done anything wrong.
"I don't know, Bill," she said, truthfully. "We're not twenty-six anymore. And we're different people. We're growing in opposite directions. And I love you, but I can't play pretend with you any more."
"Oh," Bill whispered.
Katie reached into her pocket, and drew out the ring. She placed it, almost gently, in his upturned palm. "I know I bought the rings," she said, wobbly around the edges. "But you're free to keep them."
His face is wet. Katie might be crying, too, but she's going to soldier her way through this. "I'm going back to Michigan—I need to take care of my mom. I'll leave as soon as we sort things out here."
"So that's it?" A whole decade, and Bill Goodman's in front of her, holding her engagement ring and looking—heartbroken. A whole decade ago she would have caved so fast she'd have given herself whiplash. Bill's not the only one who's changed.
"That's it," she said, simply. She wiped her face and poured herself another glass of wine—which she offered to Bill, who didn't take it. "It's been a good run, don't you think?"
He was quiet for a long moment. Katie noted the way his curls fell in his face, the bright auburn she'd so loved burnishing with age.
"Okay," he said at last. "If it's what you want. If that's what you want."
Katie could have laughed. Could have cried, offered her heart on a platter for him.
She didn't. "Have a good night, Bill," she spoke, as if not to disturb the silence that fell. She put her glass in the sink and turned to leave.
And then, because Katie was a masochist, she looked back one last time: the figure of Bill Goodman, so still at the kitchen island; representative of one chapter of her life. He hadn't turned to watch her go.
Katie walked into the dark hallway and didn't return.