# PART 19: "The Anniversary"
# PART 19: "The Anniversary"
They celebrated their fifteenth wedding anniversary on the back patio with a bottle of wine and a quiet fire in the chiminea.
The kids were asleep. The house was entirely still.
Catherine sat with her legs draped over Richard’s lap. He was absentmindedly tracing the line of her calf with his thumb. A slow, steady, reassuring rhythm.
"Fifteen years," Catherine murmured, staring into the flickering flames.
"Feels like a lifetime," Richard said.
"It feels like two lifetimes," she corrected gently. "The one before the corridor. And the one after."
Richard stopped tracing her calf. He looked down at his hand resting against her skin.
"Do you ever think about it?" he asked, his voice barely above a whisper. "About leaving?"
Catherine took a sip of her wine. She didn't offer a platitude. She offered the truth.
"I thought about it every day for the first two years," she said. "Every time you raised your voice at traffic. Every time a door shut too hard. I had a bag packed in the back of my closet until Lily turned twelve."
Richard swallowed hard. The reality of her pain was still a bitter pill to swallow. "Why didn't you?"
Catherine turned her head and looked at him. Her gaze was soft, studying the lines around his eyes, the graying hair at his temples.
"Because I watched you," she said. "I watched you do the hardest thing a human being can do. I watched you dismantle yourself and build yourself back up from scratch. I watched you choose us over your pride. Every single day."
She reached out and placed her hand over his.
"You kept your promise, Richard. You put down the weapon."
Richard looked at the fire. The heat warmed his face.
"I have one more thing to do," he said.
May you like
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