All Chapters of Between Us and Ashes: Chapter 1 - Chapter 6

He didn't come.I know how basic that sounds. I know it should not have surprised me. But I had the reservation. I had the dress. I had the small white box sitting at the bottom of my purse with a silver rattle inside it, and I had spent three days rehearsing the exact moment I would slide it across the table and watch his face change. Our fifth anniversary. Five years. I had planned everything down to the dessert course, and my husband chose to spend the evening with his ex-girlfriend instead.I sat at that table at Melo's for forty minutes. Alone.I ordered the wine. I drank it. I watched the candle burn low and I watched the waiter's expression shift from sympathy into something worse, something that looked a lot like pity, and I kept my face absolutely neutral the way I do in a courtroom when opposing counsel says something I didn't expect. You don't let them see it land. You never let them see it land.He texted at 11:47 p.m. Seven words: "I'm heading home. Sorry about tonight."

Dana opened the door before I finished knocking.She took one look at my face and pulled me inside without a word. That is the thing about Dana — she never makes you explain the part that is too hard to say out loud. She reads you in a second and she meets you exactly where you are.She poured two glasses of wine. Then she stopped, looked at me, and slid one glass back."Right," she said. "Sorry.""Nobody knows except you," I said. "And I need to keep it that way for now.""Still haven't told him?""I've tried three times. He is never actually present enough to hear it." I sat on her couch and pulled my knees up. "And after today, I'm not sure I want to tell him at all.""What happened today?"I told her. I laid it out like a case — the anniversary, the restaurant, the Instagram photo, the office, Simone on his desk, the texts, the two photos from the anonymous number. The key card.Dana was quiet all the way through. She didn't interrupt. When I finished she said, "Who is sending you

I couldn't sign.I sat in Patricia's office on Monday morning with the preliminary divorce documents open in front of me and my pen in my hand and I could not make my hand move. Patricia didn't rush me. She poured me a glass of water and said there was no deadline. She said that often the hardest part was the first signature and that everything after that was process.I knew it was process. I was an attorney. I understood process. That was not what was stopping me."Talk to me," Patricia said."I'm three months pregnant," I said. "And the thought of doing this alone—""You won't be doing it alone. You'll have counsel. You'll have support.""That's not what I mean." I put the pen down. "I mean the thought of raising this baby in two separate homes from the beginning. Of never having had it work.""And if you stay?"I didn't answer that."Love isn't the question," Patricia said. "I'm not asking if you love him. The question is whether this marriage is safe for you and for your child."S