Chapter 7 - The Drive Back
The drive back to the hotel was quiet.
Rain streaked the windows, turning Washington lights into long blurred lines. Marcus sat beside Evelyn in the back of the car with his medals still bright on his chest and his hands resting stiffly on his knees.
“I’m proud of you,” he said eventually.
Evelyn looked out the window. “Are you?”
The question was soft, but it had weight.
He turned toward her. “Of course.”
“Were you proud of me this morning?”
He opened his mouth, then closed it.
“This morning you told me to stay close and not embarrass you. You reminded me not to speak out of place. You assumed I was attending as your wife, not as an officer.”
“I didn’t know.”
“You didn’t wonder.”
That was the difference he could not escape.
He had not known because he had not asked, not listened, not believed that the parts of Evelyn’s life outside his view might be significant. He had treated her classified work as convenient mystery, useful when boasting vaguely about his accomplished wife but not important enough to respect when it interfered with him.
“I was wrong,” he said.
“Yes.”
The directness stung. It also felt cleaner than the years of careful silence.
“I don’t want to be that husband.”
Evelyn finally looked at him.
“Wanting not to be him is not the same as changing.”
“I know.”
“No,” she said. “You’re beginning to know.”
At the hotel, she stepped out before the driver could fully open the door. Marcus followed, but she stopped beneath the awning.
“I’m taking my own room tonight.”
His face tightened. “Evelyn—”
“I am not punishing you. I am giving myself quiet.”
That sentence stopped him.
He had spent years treating her quiet as something available for his interpretation. Agreement. Moodiness. Distance. Disloyalty. Tonight, for the first time, she defined it herself.
May you like
He nodded.
She entered the lobby without waiting.
