She didn’t.
She looked different.
Healthier.
More grounded.
But also less interested in pretending.
For the first time, when I asked how she was doing, she didn’t automatically answer, “Fine.”
She said:
“Today is good. Yesterday wasn’t.”
That sentence meant more to me than she knew.
About a year after the hospital, Sophie and I walked through a park near Lake Michigan.
It was early fall.
Children were feeding ducks near the water, and a man nearby was struggling to control an enormous golden retriever.
Sophie watched them for a while.
Then she said:
“I used to think people could only love me if I was easy to love.”
I looked at her.
“What does that mean?”
“If I smiled. If I didn’t complain. If I wasn’t scared. If I didn’t need too much.”
She kicked a small leaf off the sidewalk.
“So I kept making myself smaller.”
I thought about our marriage.
About how often I’d accepted “I’m tired” as an answer because the truth might have required something from me.
“I think I made it easier for you to believe that,” I said.
She looked at me.
“You weren’t responsible for my illness.”
“No.”
I nodded.
“But I was responsible for how little I tried to understand you.”
Sophie smiled faintly.
“That’s probably the healthiest thing you’ve ever said.”
I laughed.
“So therapy is making you mean?”
“Extremely.”
We kept walking.
A few minutes later, she reached over and squeezed my hand.
Nothing romantic happened after that.
And strangely, I was grateful.
Because we weren’t trying to recreate something that had already ended.
We were building something new.
People occasionally ask whether Sophie and I ever got back together.
We didn’t.
There was a time when I thought that made our story sad.
I don’t anymore.
