Diminished

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I smell fresh rain muddying our front yard and cinnamon from the apple cider she brings to a boil. It’s raining for the first time in well over a year. As I walk home the unexpected rain is absorbed by my wool sweater and now it will start to pill.

I walk into the kitchen and she brings me a mug and nods.

“So how do we do this?” I ask.

“You should ask me questions and I’ll answer them.”

“Then?”

“Oh darling… keep asking me questions until you have no more. Or until you make a decision,” she says.

“And just for clarification for where you’re at-”

“I want to stay together. Obviously. You’re the love of my life and I’d be incomplete without you. In all honesty,” she says, setting her hair behind her ear, “when you proposed last month I felt like I could die fulfilled, right then and there.”

I attempt to conceal my discomfort. “But you were in bed with him.”

“I was.”

I sip my tea.

“Who was he?”

“I’m not sure.”

“How did…” I trail off, shaking my head. “How did it happen?”

She nods. “I’d just come back from the restaurant. I was sorting through my tips and there was a knock on our door. I opened it and I saw him. In that moment I could see the next hour in vivid detail. It was inevitable.”

“What… what do you mean ‘inevitable?’”

She thinks about this for a time. My sweater begins to itch.

“It was as though whatever ground I’ve been standing on my whole life, the foundation for my decisions, was gone. I couldn’t create friction. I couldn’t generate force. All I could do was be swept away in the current of fate.”

“And fate made you sleep with him?” I ask angrily. The rain outside is gentle and constant and it fails to quell my acrimony.

“Yes, it did. I didn’t learn his name. I didn’t feel anything for the man. I don’t remember feeling pleasure at any point from start to finish. But I had to do it. It was just the way things are.”

“Did he- oh fuck, did he do something to you? To make you that way?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he was the one who altered fate. Maybe he was being pulled as well. Which implies a puppet master, I suppose.”

She was calm. There was no remorse or agitation. She was like the rain.

“I just… what do you expect me to do?”

“If you can forgive me darling, I expect you to stay with me for the rest of my life. If you can’t… then I’d imagine I’ll never see you again.”

My brow furrows. I feel tears beginning to take form. I’m sure my cheeks are flushed red. I’m searching for words when she continues, as collected as ever.

“I’ll be honest, honey. This doesn’t feel like something I should apologize for. It’s like I said. It was completely out of my control. From the moment I opened that door. I think my responsibility ends right then and there. I recognize that this is something that’s almost impossible to reconcile in a relationship. But ours can take it. I know it.”

“You said you saw the next hour.”

“I did.”

“So you knew I’d find out?”

“I did. I was out of my body for a time. I saw you take the garbage cans back behind the fence. I saw you stop when you heard the bedsprings. I saw you stand there helplessly as you realized what was going on. Then I saw you walk back to the car and leave. I didn’t see anything after that. But I knew you’d come back to me.”

I shake my head again. None of it feels right. Not one bit of it. This was the most reasonable and compassionate woman I’d ever known. She wouldn’t go this far to lie to me. She really does believe it.

“I… I’ll need some time to think.”

“I know you will. But you’ll come back.”

“What?”

“I love you. And you love me. We’ve chosen to stay together to the grave. It was a choice, honey. Our bond is stronger than this. It’s the fate we chose.”

She was right. I wish she wasn’t. But she was right.

“What if it happens again?”

“Again?” she asked, cocking her head as though this was absurd.

“What if it happens again?”

“I feel as though what happened was extraordinary. Supernatural. I don’t think things like this happen to a person more than once in their life. So I don’t think it will happen again.”

“What if it does?”

She ponders this for a while.

“If it happens again, I don’t think you’ll ever be able to trust me. I can see it in your eyes. In a way that only I can,” she says, putting her hands over mine. “If it happens again…”

“Leave me and don’t ever look back.”