By the time I admitted that Wendell's house bothered me, I had already found a dozen reasons not to mention it.<\/p>\n
I told myself he might be embarrassed.<\/p>\n
I told myself he could be dealing with repairs.<\/p>\n
I even wondered whether he had some family difficulty he wasn't ready to discuss.<\/p>\n
Any of those things would have been understandable.<\/p>\n
What troubled me was that he never gave me enough information to know which explanation, if any, was true.<\/p>\n
He simply kept the door closed.<\/p>\n
Whenever the subject came up, I tried to make my questions sound casual.<\/p>\n
I didn't want him to think I was demanding access to every corner of his life.<\/p>\n
I had no interest in controlling him.<\/p>\n
I wanted to feel that he trusted me.<\/p>\n
There was a difference, although I wasn't always sure I knew where it ended.<\/p>\n
One afternoon, I asked whether he had finished the work he'd mentioned needing to do at home.<\/p>\n
He paused before answering.<\/p>\n
It was only a moment, but I noticed.<\/p>\n
"Not yet," he said.<\/p>\n
I waited for him to explain.<\/p>\n
He didn't.<\/p>\n
So I nodded and asked about something else.<\/p>\n
That became our pattern.<\/p>\n
I asked.<\/p>\n
He deflected.<\/p>\n
I pretended not to notice.<\/p>\n
The more often it happened, the more determined I became not to make an issue of it.<\/p>\n
I had spent enough years in a marriage to know that people needed space.<\/p>\n
Dwight had his habits, and I had mine.<\/p>\n
We didn't tell each other every thought that crossed our minds.<\/p>\n
We didn't need to.<\/p>\n
But Dwight had never made me feel as though an ordinary question was dangerous.<\/p>\n
That was what I couldn't put out of my mind.<\/p>\n
With Wendell, I sometimes felt as if I had wandered too close to a line I couldn't see.<\/p>\n
He was never cruel when I crossed it.<\/p>\n
He didn't raise his voice or tell me to mind my business.<\/p>\n
He simply became quiet, and the warmth between us changed.<\/p>\n
Then, when I moved away from the subject, he would seem relieved.<\/p>\n
I noticed that relief.<\/p>\n
I hated myself for noticing it.<\/p>\n
I wanted to be the kind of woman who could accept a man's boundaries without turning them into a personal rejection.<\/p>\n
I also wanted to stop feeling like a guest in a relationship I was helping build.<\/p>\n
Those two desires kept fighting each other.<\/p>\n
For a while, I managed to ignore the conflict.<\/p>\n
Wendell continued to be thoughtful.<\/p>\n
He remembered things that mattered to me.<\/p>\n
He listened when I spoke about Dwight, even when the memories made my voice falter.<\/p>\n
He didn't tell me to move on.<\/p>\n
He didn't suggest that my grief was inconvenient.<\/p>\n
If anything, he seemed to understand that some losses never become small.<\/p>\n
That made me feel safe with him.<\/p>\n
And because I felt safe in so many other ways, I began treating the locked door as a minor flaw.<\/p>\n
Everybody had something.<\/p>\n
Perhaps this was his.<\/p>\n
I said that to myself often enough that it almost sounded like wisdom.<\/p>\n
But I was not wise.<\/p>\n
I was afraid of losing the first person who had made me feel less alone since Dwight died.<\/p>\n
I worried that one difficult conversation might destroy something I had barely allowed myself to enjoy.<\/p>\n
So I kept my questions gentle.<\/p>\n
I gave him room.<\/p>\n
I waited.<\/p>\n
And I told myself that love was not supposed to feel like an investigation.<\/p>\n
The trouble was that I had never wanted to investigate him in the first place.<\/p>\n
I had wanted to know him.<\/p>\n
Those are not the same thing.<\/p>\n
As the weeks passed, I found myself wondering about his house at the oddest moments.<\/p>\n
I wondered what his kitchen looked like.<\/p>\n
I wondered whether he had photographs of his family.<\/p>\n
I wondered whether his favorite chair was worn through at the arms, the way Dwight's had been.<\/p>\n
Ordinary things.<\/p>\n
That was all I wanted.<\/p>\n
A place to hang my coat.<\/p>\n
A cup of coffee at his table.<\/p>\n
A chance to sit beside him somewhere that belonged to him.<\/p>\n
I could imagine all those things easily.<\/p>\n
What I couldn't imagine was why they seemed to trouble him so much.<\/p>\n
Sometimes I considered asking him directly whether he was ashamed of his home.<\/p>\n
The thought made me uncomfortable.<\/p>\n
If he was embarrassed, I didn't want to hurt him.<\/p>\n
If he wasn't embarrassed, I didn't want to insult him.<\/p>\n
And if there was another reason, I wasn't sure I wanted to hear it.<\/p>\n
That last possibility was the one I tried hardest to ignore.<\/p>\n
I had become very good at avoiding thoughts that threatened my happiness.<\/p>\n
It was an ability I mistook for maturity.<\/p>\n
Then came the day I found myself thinking about the approaching Christmas season.<\/p>\n
I had always liked Christmas, even when life was difficult.<\/p>\n
After Dwight died, I found the holiday harder to face.<\/p>\n
There were too many reminders of the years we had spent together, too many familiar habits that suddenly had nowhere to go.<\/p>\n
I had considered doing very little that year.<\/p>\n
A quiet meal.<\/p>\n
A few decorations.<\/p>\n
Perhaps a call to someone I hadn't spoken to in a while.<\/p>\n
I wasn't looking for a grand celebration.<\/p>\n
I only wanted the day to feel manageable.<\/p>\n
Wendell and I talked about Christmas, and I found myself wondering whether we might spend some of it together.<\/p>\n
The idea made me nervous.<\/p>\n
It also made me happy.<\/p>\n
I tried not to show how much.<\/p>\n
I didn't want him to think I expected him to fill every empty space Dwight had left behind.<\/p>\n
That wasn't what I wanted.<\/p>\n
I wanted to make a new memory without feeling as though I had betrayed an old one.<\/p>\n
Wendell seemed to understand that.<\/p>\n
He didn't promise anything elaborate.<\/p>\n
He didn't make a big announcement about the holiday.<\/p>\n
But there was something in his expression that made me think the date mattered to him too.<\/p>\n
I couldn't have explained why.<\/p>\n
I only knew that when Christmas came up, he became more thoughtful than usual.<\/p>\n
I wondered whether he had family traditions he missed.<\/p>\n
I wondered whether he had lost someone too.<\/p>\n
I didn't press him.<\/p>\n
I had learned that he would tell me what he wanted me to know, and nothing more.<\/p>\n
At least, that was how I understood it then.<\/p>\n
A few days later, I found myself thinking about how little I knew about the private parts of his life.<\/p>\n
I knew the sound of his laugh.<\/p>\n
I knew the look he got when he was trying not to smile.<\/p>\n
I knew how he could make a simple conversation feel important.<\/p>\n
But I didn't know what waited behind his front door.<\/p>\n
That realization left me uneasy.<\/p>\n
Not because I believed every relationship required complete openness.<\/p>\n
Because I had started to understand that I was doing all the work of making his secrecy comfortable.<\/p>\n
I was the one changing the subject.<\/p>\n
I was the one making excuses.<\/p>\n
I was the one reminding myself that I had no right to ask for more.<\/p>\n
And all the while, I was hoping he would decide to give it to me.<\/p>\n
I didn't say any of that to Wendell.<\/p>\n
I was afraid the words would sound like an accusation.<\/p>\n
Instead, I carried the questions quietly.<\/p>\n
I thought time would settle them.<\/p>\n
I thought affection would make the problem disappear.<\/p>\n
I thought that if I could show him I wasn't going to judge him, he might finally trust me enough to open the door.<\/p>\n
What I failed to understand was that trust couldn't be built by one person doing all the forgiving before anything had even been explained.<\/p>\n
I was preparing to excuse something I didn't understand.<\/p>\n
I just didn't know what it was yet.<\/p>\n
By the time I admitted that Wendell's house bothered me, I had already found a dozen reasons not to mention it. I told myself he might be embarrassed. I told … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36506,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insightdrama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36508"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36508\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36528,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36508\/revisions\/36528"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/36506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}