“Six years, Ethan. I can’t keep waiting forever.”
He was standing in our bedroom doorway, watching me fold sweaters into a suitcase.
It was the big gray suitcase. The one we’d bought together for our trip to Portugal three years ago. There was still a luggage tag on the handle with both our names on it in his handwriting. Ethan Cole & Claire Bennett. I’d looked at it while I was packing and almost lost my nerve.
“I love you, Claire,” he said.
I didn’t look up. I folded a blue sweater in half and then in half again.
“Then why won’t you marry me?”
He rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand. It was the thing he always did when he didn’t want to answer.
“It’s not that simple,” he said.
I’d been hearing that answer for three years.
It’s not that simple. Not right now. Can we talk about it later? Please, not tonight.
The thing was, Ethan was a good man. He was a good partner in every other way. I want you to understand that, because otherwise what I’m about to tell you won’t make sense.
When I had the flu two winters ago, he brought me soup from the Vietnamese place on Grand Avenue every day for a week, even though it was out of his way. When my dad’s roof started leaking last spring, Ethan drove two hours on a Saturday to help him patch it, and he didn’t complain once, even when he slipped and almost fell off the ladder.
He remembered my coffee order. He remembered my sister’s kids’ birthdays. He still held my hand in the car.
But whenever marriage came up, he shut down. Like a door closing.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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