Chapter 10 - Cleaning House
The estate sale truck arrived at the Evanston townhouse on a bright, freezing Saturday morning in early December.
The lawn was dusted with a light skin of frost that crunched beneath the boots of the two movers Clara had hired to help clear the remaining clutter.
I stood in the center of the living room, wearing jeans and an old wool sweater, holding a clipboard with a checklist.
The house already looked different. The heavy, dark leather furniture Kyle had insisted on buying—pieces that looked like they belonged in a corporate cigar lounge—were tagged with yellow auction stickers. His oversized television was already packed into the back of the van.
"Where does this go?" Clara asked, emerging from the study holding a large, framed photograph of Kyle crossing the finish line of the Chicago Half-Marathon, arms raised in triumphant, self-congratulatory glory.
"Trash bin," I said without looking up.
"Are you sure? It’s a very high-quality frame."
"Take the frame. Trash the picture."
Clara grinned, popped the clips on the back of the frame, let Kyle’s smiling face fall into the black industrial garbage bag, and stacked the silver frame neatly against the wall.
By noon, the house was nearly empty.
The bare hardwood floors echoed with every step. The sunlight streamed through the tall front windows, hitting the pale oak boards and illuminating dust motes dancing in the clean, quiet air.
It was the first time in five years that the house felt spacious.
"Hungry?" Clara asked, collapsing onto the bottom step of the staircase with two bottles of sparkling water.
"Starving."
"Thai food? The place down on Sherman?"
"Perfect."
Before we could leave, a soft knock sounded against the front door.
I paused, my hand resting on my jacket zipper. "Did you order something?"
"No," Clara said, her eyebrows knitting together.
I walked to the door and looked through the peep-glass.
Kyle was standing on the porch.
He didn't have a car. He was wearing an old down parka I remembered from our college days, his hands shoved deep into his pockets against the wind. He looked smaller, his shoulders curved inward against the cold.
I opened the door, leaving the storm screen locked between us.
"Kyle."
He looked up. His face was chapped raw by the wind, his eyes red-rimmed. "Eleanor. Hi."
"You shouldn't be here. The settlement agreement specifies all communication goes through Marcus."
"I know," he said quickly, his voice muffled by the glass. "I know. I’m not here to fight. I swear. I just... I saw the moving truck down the street. I was at the coffee shop around the corner."
"What do you want, Kyle?"
He stood on the porch, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. "I sold the Audi yesterday. Got nineteen thousand for it. My brother loaned me the rest. I paid North Harbor this morning."
"Good. Then you won't go to prison."
"Yeah," he said, letting out a weak, hollow breath that fogged the glass. "I guess that's something."
He looked past me, into the empty, echoing living room where our life had been packed into cardboard boxes.
"Sophia’s working at an insurance call center in Schaumburg," he said, as if offering a piece of news that might interest me. "She won't return my texts. She told Vince that I ruined her reputation."
"You did," I said. "And she helped you."
Kyle looked back at me, his eyes wide, pleading with a desperate, pathetic nostalgia that made my stomach turn.
"Do you remember our trip to Maine?" he asked softly. "Our third anniversary? We rented that little cabin by the lighthouse. It rained for four days straight, and we just played Scrabble and cooked clam chowder on that tiny stove."
I remembered.
I remembered sitting by that stove while he spent three hours on the porch trying to find cell service so he could check his LinkedIn notifications.
"I remember," I said.
"We were happy then, weren't we?" he asked, pressing his hand against the glass screen. "Before the promotions. Before the seventh floor. We were good together, Ellie. We could... we could start over. Somewhere smaller. I’ll take any job. I’ll work in logistics. We could just—"
"Kyle."
He stopped, his hand trembling against the glass.
"That wasn't happiness," I said, my voice quiet, completely stripped of anger, carrying only the absolute weight of reality. "That was just me making excuses for your absence before you found someone else to be absent with."
His mouth trembled. The desperate hope in his eyes shattered, leaving only the cold, empty truth behind.
"Goodbye, Kyle," I said.
May you like
I shut the heavy front door, turned the brass deadbolt, and walked back into the clean, bright emptiness of my home.
***
