Charles was running on the treadmill, watching the morning news on low in front of him, his phone next to his bed, when he saw it light up out of the corner of his eye. An email, maybe. Or a text.
He ignored it and kept running.
That weekend he and Liza drove up with Nicole and Bianca to a horse sanctuary in Chatham, had a picnic in the mountains, then drove back to the city as the sun set behind them. The girls fell asleep in the back seat of the car, and he and Liza talked the whole ride back, quietly, about who they thought was the most overrated author.
Just thinking about it now, on Tuesday morning before the sun came up, made him smile.
He got off the treadmill after putting in six miles and jumped quickly into the shower. When he got out he wrapped himself in a towel, took one to dry his hair, and absentmindedly walked back to his bedside table.
He looked down at the phone and his heart fell to the floor.
Pauline: I'm back in New York. Can we meet?
"Fuck," Charles said.
He was shocked, then angry, then sad, then angry again, when Pauline left. Then a part of him felt partially relieved; despite all of the stress, and the uncertainty, and the crippling loneliness, in the last few years life at home hadn't been great.
And then came Liza. Everything about him and his life changed when he met her, and months later when he kissed her, and he was a better man every single day since. She removed the feeling of dread from his life.
When he saw the text, that dread returned. He panicked.
He rushed to get dressed and get the girls up. He grabbed his phone, walked them to school, and debated going back home - but he knew he would just go crazy there.
On his walk to work he started dialing.
"Can we meet before work?," he asked.
"Is everything ok?," Liza asked.
"I hope so."
Liza was at the coffee shop before him and he rushed right in. She could see on his face something was wrong.
"Charles, what -"
He put his phone down on the table and showed her the text.
"I haven't heard from Pauline in two years. She's ignored the divorce papers. She's missed two Christmases, four birthdays, she wouldn't even tell her own mother - my kids' grandmother - where she was," he said.
"And she just sends me this?"
The dread that Charles felt, Liza felt it too. They had been in a bubble of their own making for so long now, she had forgotten it couldn't last forever.
Charles leaned back and looked Liza expectantly, waiting for her to say something.
"Oh, Charles," she said, breathing out. She held his hand.
"I knew it was coming," he said. "I thought it would happen sooner. Wanted it to, so many months ago. But then -" He sighed again.
" - I know," Liza said. "What are you going to write back?"
"Write back?," he said. "I should ignore her for two years."
"Charles," Liza said, shaking her head. "The girls. Nicole and Bianca. Their mom is back."
"I know," he said. He closed his eyes and rubbed his face. "Maybe I shouldn't go to work today."
"Meet her today," she said. "You have to see what she's going to say."
Before they left she kissed him softly and then hugged him, and he held on to her tightly.
"We're good no matter what," he said.
Pauline sat at a back table in a restaurant in lower Manhattan, far from their old life but not as far as she'd been the last two years.
Charles walked through the front door and saw her there, alone, looking at her phone. She looked slightly different, smaller maybe, or her hair was different.
"Pauline," he said, and she looked up suddenly at him. He didn't know what to do. Hug her? Give her his hand?
He sat down instead, sitting across from his wife, who he hadn't seen in two years.
"Charles," she said.
And then he became so viscerally angry he had to fight himself from screaming.
"Why are you back here," he said. "Where have you been."
"Charles, I -"
" - You abandoned us. You vanished. You could have been dead for all I knew."
"I wasn't dead," she said.
"Do you know what you did to your daughters?," he said, his voice trembling.
"I had to show them how to live their own lives."
"You showed them nothing," he said. "Absolutely nothing. You showed them how to leave. That's it. Was I so bad? I was so bad you had to leave your whole family?"
"Charles, can we just talk calmly —"
"I will not talk to you or let you see nicole and Bianca until you sign and return the divorce papers," he said. "Do you understand? Do you need another copy?"
"That is incredibly unfair," she said. "I want to see them and I want to talk to you."
"You had years to see them," he said as he stood up. "Now that you're back we have to finish this."