Strangers

Even in my lowest moments, even in the nadirs of hurt and betrayal, I still believed in our love story, in our happiness as a family. Those stories are preserved in the words we wrote to each other, in the movies James made, in the albums I made, in the life we collected over the years. But they also exist in our kids’ minds, in their skin and bones, in their souls. And in mine. James changed our present and our future, but not our past. This is the gift of an abrupt ending, an exit with no lead-up or warning. He didn’t infect our lives with discord, with bickering, with visible discontent, before he left. He kept it lovely until he blew it up.