I love you so so much.
Never thought that would be the last time she'd say it. With or without words.
One.
Footsteps.
Her footsteps, in the corridor outside the door. She's finally coming back from the bridal suite, where she and Odessa did whatever girls did in the hour after the wedding reception and before the wedding night.
“Show time, honey.”
The woman turns to face me again, but she doesn't make the same mistake again. She doesn't inch close, with the gun still between us.
The footsteps stop.
The door handle turns.
I fight the urge to turn around as I hear her open the door.
I hear her take one step in. Then nothing. Then her stumbling back. Footsteps. The click of the door.
My heart feels like it's turning into stone by the second.
She doesn't make a sound. Doesn't have to. Because the silence of my marriage falling apart is the loudest thing I'll ever hear.
And once I'm sure she's completely gone—
I don't waste time sitting up. “Get out.”
“Are you—”
“I said get out!”
“Asshole!”
She's not wrong about that. But I still want her out.
I wish I had the luxury of just punching the wall again and again and again.
But I don't.
Mi dispiace.
Mi dispiace, moglie mia.
Because it's at that moment I also realize.
Ti amo.
I have no choice.
I love her and that's why I had to do this.
IT'S RAINING.
I'm at the window of my apartment, and outside the window is the lake, and on the lake is the rain, and in my hand is a stack of paper I have been holding too long.
The papers are signed.