Chapter 2 — The Distance Between Them

Mark’s shoe sank into the rubber flooring with a muted scrape.

Noah tightened his grip on the back of Mark’s jacket.

“Dad?”

Mark did not turn.

Every muscle in him wanted to move faster, to cross the gym and demand an answer that could make sense of what he had seen.

But Noah’s small hand was there, clutching fabric between his shoulder blades, and the sound of his son’s voice kept him from becoming someone Noah would fear.

“Stay there,” Mark said.

Noah’s fingers did not let go.

Mark looked down at him at last.

Noah’s eyes were wet already, his face pinched with the effort of not crying.

He looked from Mark to Sarah as though he had missed an instruction, as though one of them only needed to explain the game.

“Right by the door,” Mark said, quieter now.

“Don’t come in.

Okay?”

Noah nodded once, though his hand remained locked around Mark’s jacket.

Sarah saw it.

The color left her face so quickly it was almost violent.

A moment before, she had been breathing hard from something that was not exercise, one hand curled near the trainer’s chest.

Now she seemed unable to decide where to put either hand.

She pulled them against her stomach, then dropped them again.

“Mark,” she said.

His name came out thin.

He faced her fully.

The mirrors multiplied them around the gym: Mark in the doorway, Sarah on the mat, the trainer beside her, Noah small and frightened behind his father.

In every reflection Sarah looked equally trapped.

Her ponytail had slipped loose at the nape of her neck.

There was a flush on her cheeks that did not belong to the overhead lights.

Mark noticed it all with a clarity that made him sick.

Sarah’s mouth opened.

Nothing came out.

Then she gasped.

It was not dramatic.

It was a short, broken inhale, like her body had finally caught up to the disaster standing in front of her.

For years, Mark had known the ordinary language of Sarah’s face.

He knew the crease that appeared between her brows when she was trying not to laugh.

He knew the look she gave Noah when he had a nightmare, all patience and warmth.

He knew the way she watched the front window when she expected Mark home late.

This expression was new.

Not sorrow.

Not yet.

Fear.

The realization landed harder than the kiss had.

Sarah was not looking at him as a husband who had been hurt.

She was looking at him as the person who had interrupted a life she had thought she could keep hidden.

“What is this?”

Mark asked.

His voice was steady enough that Noah looked up at him, searching for reassurance.

Sarah took a step backward.

Her heel nudged a loose weight plate, and it rolled an inch across the floor with a hollow clack.

She flinched at the sound.

“It isn’t what you think,” she said.

Mark’s eyes moved briefly to the trainer, then back to her.

“You were kissing him.”

“I know what it looked like.”

The words seemed to surprise her as much as they surprised him.

Mark gave a small, empty laugh.

“You know what it looked like.”

“Please,” Sarah said.

“Not in front of Noah.”

At his name, Noah peeked around Mark’s side.

Sarah saw him and her face crumpled.

She started toward the doorway.

Mark lifted one hand.

She stopped.

He had not touched her.

He did not raise his voice.

The distance between them was only a few feet, but Sarah halted as if there were a wall.

“No,” Mark said.

“Mark, he’s scared.”

“He’s scared because he saw you.”

Noah made a small sound behind him.

Mark shut his eyes for half a second.

He hated himself for saying it that way.

Noah did not need words that would follow him into sleep.

But the truth had escaped before Mark could soften it.

Sarah’s eyes filled.

“I’m sorry.”

The apology hovered in the bright room, absurdly small beneath the squat rack and the clean white lights.

Mark waited for it to become more.

A reason.

A denial.

Anything that acknowledged the shape of what she had broken.

It did not.

The trainer shifted his weight beside her.

Mark caught the movement in the mirror.

The man’s arms hung at his sides, but his stance had widened.

Protective.

Prepared.

Mark’s hands curled into fists, then opened again.

Noah was watching.

Noah was always watching now.

“Dad,” Noah whispered.

Mark turned only enough to see him.

“I’m here.”

“Mommy’s crying.”

Sarah pressed her lips together.

The trainer looked toward Noah, then away.

Mark crouched, putting himself closer to his son’s height without taking his eyes entirely off the room.

“I know.

You stay by the door, just like I said.”

“Is Mommy hurt?”

The question cut through him.

Sarah covered her mouth.

For a moment, she looked less like someone caught in a lie than Noah’s mother, devastated by what her child had been forced to ask.

“No,” Mark said.

“Mommy isn’t hurt.”

Noah studied Sarah.

“Then why is she sad?”

Mark stood again.

He could not answer.

Sarah could not either.

The silence grew so complete that the faint hum of the ventilation filled it.

Mark looked at the dumbbells lined in their rack, at the polished metal bars, at the neat order Sarah had maintained in this room.

He remembered her asking for the gym because she wanted a place to feel strong.

He had believed her.

Sarah wiped her cheeks with the heel of her hand.

“I never wanted Noah to see anything like this.”

“You didn’t want me to see it,” Mark said.

Her shoulders folded inward.

That was the first thing she had said that felt true.

Mark looked at Noah again.

His son was standing exactly where he had been told, trying to be brave in his burgundy cardigan.

Mark felt pride and grief twist together so tightly he could barely breathe.

“Go to the hall,” he told Noah.

Noah shook his head.

“Please, buddy.”

“I want Mommy.”

Sarah took another instinctive step forward.

Mark’s gaze stopped her before she could take a second.

Noah’s lower lip trembled.

“Mom?”

Sarah’s face broke open.

“I’m here, sweetheart.”

The trainer moved then, not toward Noah, but slightly in front of Sarah.

The shift was subtle, his gray shirt entering the line between Mark and her.

Mark felt the cold inside him deepen.

The man looked directly at Mark, drawing breath to speak.