The Househusband Chapter 09

The Househusband Chapter 09 He’s Gone

Charlotte reached out through my mother. She wanted to see me one last time. “I won’t beg,” she said in the message Susan passed along. “I just want to say a few things. Face to face. Then I’ll leave you alone.”

I thought about it for two days. Turned it over in my head while I was working, while I was cooking dinner, while I was putting Leo to bed.

–

Olivia – who I’d been seeing casually for a few weeks by then told me it was my decision and she’d support whatever I chose. “You don’t owe her anything,” she said, “but if it’ll help you close this chapter.go:

I asked David if there was any legal reason not to go. He said no, but he also said I didn’t owe her closure. “That’s something she has to find on her own.”

Then I agreed.

Central Park. October. The leaves were turning gold and red and the air had that sharp edge that makes you pull your jacket tighter.

The park was busy runners, families, tourists with cameras. Normal life happening all around us. A street musician was playing guitar near the entrance, something slow and acoustic that drifted through the trees. The smell of roasted nuts came from a cart nearby, and a group of kids were chasing pigeons across the path.

She was already sitting on a bench when I got there with Leo in the stroller. She’d lost a lot of weight. No makeup. Hair down, no style. Just a regular wool coat and boots.

Nothing like the polished PR director who used to plan dinner parties for twenty and make it look effortless. She looked like a regular person. Maybe for the first time since I’d known her. There were dark circles under her eyes that she didn’t try to hide, and her hands, when she clasped them together, had a slight tremor.

She stood up when she saw me. Her eyes went to Leo first, then to me. She smiled at him – a small, tired smile and he babbled something back at her from the stroller.

She reached out and touched his cheek, and he grabbed her finger and held it. For a moment she just stood there, holding her son’s tiny hand, and I could see her trying not to break down right there at the start.

“I’m not asking you to come back,” she said. Her voice was steady, like she’d rehearsed this but was trying not to sound rehearsed. “I lost that right a long time ago.

I just want you to know something. I get it now. Not because I lost the apartment or my job or my reputation. Because I hurt you. And I hurt Leo. And I’ll carry that for the rest of my life.”

I was quiet for a while. The park was loud around us – kids on the playground, joggers passing by, a dog barking somewhere. Normal life going on like nothing was happening.

A leaf drifted down from the tree above us and landed on Leo’s stroller blanket.

“Thank you for saying that,” I said. “But we’re done. I’m not angry anymore. I haven’t been angry in a long time. I just don’t care anymore.

The guy who would have forgiven you – the version of me that loved you enough to overlook anything he’s gone. He died the night I watched you defend me in front of thirty people while lying to every single

one of them.”

Charlotte’s eyes filled up but she didn’t let the tears fall. She held them back, like she was trying to show me she could still be strong. Or maybe she was trying to show herself.

“I know,” she said. “I just needed you to hear me say it. Even if it doesn’t change anything.”

“It doesn’t.”

She nodded. Looked down at her boots. A long silence passed between us, filled only by the sounds of the park and Leo’s quiet babbling.

Then she looked back up at me, and for the first time in a long time, I saw something in her eyes that looked honest. Not performed, not calculated. Just honest.

“I think about it every day,” she said. “Not the scandal or the court stuff. I think about the small things. The way you used to make coffee before I woke up. The way you’d put Leo on your chest and just lie there for an hour, not doing anything, just being with him. I had all of that and I threw it away for something that meant nothing.”

She didn’t beg.

She knelt down and kissed Leo’s forehead, pressing her lips there for a long moment, like she was trying to memorize the feel of his skin. Leo reached up and touched her cheek with his small hand, and she closed her eyes and held his fingers against her face for a few seconds.

—

When she let go, her hand was shaking. She whispered something to him – too quiet for me to hear and then let his fingers slip away.

Then she stood up, put her hands in her coat pockets, and walked away. She didn’t look back. I didn’t expect her to. She’d said what she came to say, and I’d said what I needed to say, and neither of us had any words left.

I watched her disappear down the park path, getting smaller and smaller until she was just a dark coat among the autumn trees. She didn’t look back. Not once.

The street musician started playing something new-something faster, more upbeat, completely wrong for the moment. Leo babbled something in the stroller and I reached down and held his hand. His fingers wrapped around mine and he squeezed, tight, like he knew I needed it.

We sat there for a while longer. Just me and Leo on a bench in Central Park, watching the world keep moving. The sun was getting lower and the shadows were longer, and somewhere in the distance a church bell started ringing.