The Week I Learned What Leaving Actually Costs

The Week I Learned What Leaving Actually Costs
The first morning of my marriage, I woke up in a motel with dried mud still under my nails.

For a second I didn’t know where I was. The curtains were that heavy beige color motels use when they don’t want to commit to anything, and the air conditioner under the window rattled like it had been held together by prayer and one stubborn screw. My wedding dress—what was left of it—was hanging from the shower rod in the bathroom, the lace skirt rinsed out but still stained brown around the hem. Ben’s suit jacket was draped over the desk chair. My veil lay in a wet loop on top of the TV cabinet beside the Gideon Bible and two little paper cups wrapped in plastic.

Then I remembered the gravel path. Jenna’s hand between my shoulder blades. My mother saying, please don’t start like I was a fire she was tired of putting out.

And I remembered Ben kneeling in the mud beside me in his wedding clothes, asking the one question nobody in my family had ever made room for first.

Are you hurt?