The Long Goodbye

David sits in the orange plastic chair that matches his jumpsuit, his hands folded in his lap. The visiting room smells like industrial cleaner and desperation. I study him—the hair I used to run my fingers through is thinning now, cropped short against prison regulations. But his eyes are the same. They still have that capacity to look right through me, as if I'm transparent.

"You look good," I say, because it's the script we follow. The same script we've followed for twenty years of marriage, three years of his embezzlement trial, and now, six months of his incarceration.

"You too." He reaches across the metal table, his fingers brushing mine. The contact electric, immediate, dangerous. Like touching a live wire you know could burn you.

Our daughter Emma's first baseball game plays on the small TV mounted in the corner. She was seven then, bundled in her oversized jersey, face smeared with dirt, grinning like she'd just discovered the meaning of happiness. David had spent the whole inning explaining the rules to me, even though I knew them perfectly. He loved explaining things. It was his way of loving—teaching, guiding, being needed.

"Emma got into NYU," I say, and something cracks in his expression. A fissure in the porcelain mask he's been wearing since the trial began.

"That's... that's wonderful." His voice catches. "I'm missing everything."

"You chose this, David."

"I chose to protect you."

"You chose to steal three million dollars from your clients."

The accusation hangs between us, familiar and exhausted. We've had this conversation so many times it's become a ritual, like communion without grace. He siphoned the money into offshore accounts to build us a "future," a legacy that would ensure we never wanted for anything. Instead, he'd ensured we'd never have peace again.

I should leave him. Every logical voice in my head—my therapist, my sister, the prosecuting attorney—screams that I should file the papers, change the locks, disappear. But I'm a zombie in this marriage now, moving through the motions of visiting days and collect calls, sustained by something that looks like love but might just be muscle memory.

"Do you remember," he asks suddenly, "when we drove to Atlantic City that weekend? Just because we'd never seen the ocean at night?"

I remember. I remember everything—the salt air, the way he held my hand while we walked the boardwalk, the cheap motel room where we made love like we were trying to memorize each other's bodies in case the world ended.

"I remember," I say.

"I keep thinking," he says, "that if I'd just asked you to run away then, instead of... all this..."

"You didn't want to run away, David. You wanted to buy the world."

The guard announces time's up. David stands, and for a moment, just a moment, I see the man I fell for—the one with dreams too big for his circumstances, the one who loved me with an intensity that felt like danger and safety all at once.

"Next week?" he asks.

"Next week," I say, and watch him walk away, already practicing next week's script, already preparing to survive another seven days of wanting someone I can no longer trust but cannot bring myself to leave.