The wheels in Ben's head started turning at her answer. She packed when she thought they were divorcing — before Christmas, then. Had she been living out of her suitcases ever since? He wondered how he hadn't noticed, but given how distant they'd been over the holiday season and then how distant he had been once he'd started receiving letters about Elliott, it really wasn't much of a surprise. Still, a voice that sounded a lot like Art chimed in the back of his head: this is not normal, you are not okay. Neither of them were; it wasn't normal for Ben to feel so paranoid about how he spent his time that he could not make plans to leave the house without having a ready excuse, and it wasn't normal to burn his letters to keep them from her. It wasn't normal to live out of suitcases for over a month because you were constantly afraid your husband was going to ask you to leave your house.

"So I guess neither of us really believed in it," he said wearily. "Our fresh start."

This hung in the air. Ben wondered if he ought to force a laugh but he wasn't even sure if he'd meant it to be a joke or not, so it seemed stupid to try and pretend he found anything funny about it.

After a long pause, he said quietly, "I didn't want to tell Art. I didn't really tell him." He looked at his hands, flexing his fingers uncomfortably. "But he's not stupid, so he's probably guessed. I — I was afraid you'd —" he broke off, face red. "I didn't know where you were. And the last conversation we had was when I left. So I thought — I had to check the apothecary," he said, a little desperately; the subtext of this little speech being please understand; please forgive me. "I had to check. I just didn't want — but you didn't. Right? You didn't."