All Chapters of Thirty Days Before Goodbye : Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

"I want a divorce."He didn't even sit down first.Ethan walked through the front door at six p.m. which should've been my first warning, because Ethan Cole doesn't come home at six and he stood in the hallway still wearing his coat and he said those four words like he'd been rehearsing them in the car the whole way here.I was holding a dish towel. I don't know why that's the detail I remember. I was holding a dish towel, and the pasta water was boiling behind me, and the kitchen smelled like garlic and olive oil, and my husband was standing in the doorway telling me our marriage was over."Vivienne's back," he said. "She's staying. And I…I can't keep pretending that things between us are…""Fine," I said.He stopped. "What?""I said fine." My voice was steady. I don't know how. Some part of me must've known this was coming, must've been preparing for it in the background, quietly, the way your body sometimes knows things your mind refuses to. "I'll go. I just want thirty days first

I wore a green dress.I'd bought it eight months ago for a dinner that never happened, our anniversary, which Ethan had remembered at six p.m. and apologized for at six-fifteen via text while I sat in the restaurant we were supposed to go to together. I'd taken the dress home still in its bag. Every time I looked at it in the closet I thought: soon.Tonight was soon. Even if it wasn't what I'd imagined.I arrived at Marlowe's at five to seven and asked for the east window table. The restaurant was everything Ethan had described; low light, white linen, the kind of place that made you feel like whatever you were about to say mattered. The view through the glass was the city at its most forgiving hour, all gold and blur and movement.I ordered a glass of Burgundy and I looked at the menu and I didn't let myself check my watch.He'd said seven-thirty. It was seven-ten. I had time.The scallops were on the menu exactly where he'd said they'd be. Seared, with cauliflower purée. I remember

I printed two tickets again. I know. I need you to understand that I knew, I absolutely knew, on some level, that I was setting myself up. But I printed two anyway, because the alternative was admitting, before anything had actually happened, that he wasn't coming and I wasn't ready for that yet.I arrived at the north gate at five to ten. November light, thin and pale, catching the last of the autumn decorations, giant harvest wreaths and strings of amber lights that wouldn't look out of place in a dream. It smelled like cinnamon and cold air and something faintly sweet I couldn't identify.I found a bench near the fountain and I sat down and I sent Ethan the location pin.He'd confirmed the night before. I'll be there. Three words. Unambiguous.At ten-thirty, I bought myself a coffee. Black, two sugars, my actual order, not the one I'd been making at home for years because it was easier than reaching past him for the second sugar jar. It's funny, the small ways you disappear inside

I almost didn't wear the black dress.After the concert, I'd spent two days in the kind of quiet that isn't peaceful, the kind that sits on your chest. I went to work, came home, made dinner, and went to bed. I'd been civil to Ethan, who hadn't mentioned the concert and neither had I. We'd orbited each other in the house with the careful distance of two people who both know something happened and have agreed, without saying so, not to address it yet.On the morning of the business dinner, I stood in front of my closet for a long time.The black dress was there. Open back, clean lines, the kind that required a reason. I'd bought it in spring on a whim, a saleswoman with a good eye had said that it was made for you and I'd believed her and brought it home and waited for an occasion worthy of it.This is your last month, I told myself. Stop saving things.I put on the dress.Ethan was in the entry when I came downstairs. He was adjusting his cufflinks in the hallway mirror, phone tucked

It started with rain and a bowl of pasta.Not romantic. Not planned. Just a Tuesday, ten days before the end, and Ethan coming home at seven with that look he'd been carrying lately. The one I didn't have a name for yet. Less certain than his usual expression. Slightly unmoored, like a man who'd started questioning his own directions.I was in the living room with my book. He stopped in the doorway, still in his coat, and looked at me on the sofa the way you look at something you'd expected to be different."You're home," he said."I live here," I said. "For nine more days."Something moved across his face. He took off his jacket. Sat at the other end of the sofa not close, but closer than he'd been in a long time. Reached for the remote. Turned on a nature documentary, low volume. Didn't flip to the news, which was his usual. Just a documentary about somewhere quiet and far away.We sat like that. Rain against the windows. The narrator's voice a low murmur. My book is open in my l