The First Husband

“In place of?” My eyes got wide. “I don’t write anything anymore? There won’t be a column?”

She clapped her hands together. “Exactly,” she said. “And would you smile, please? What happens when I actually have to give you bad news one day? This is fabulous!”

“And I’m really grateful, Melinda, don’t get me wrong . . .” I said, trying to figure out how to explain it. “But since we’re talking about doing something new with the column, I actually had a different idea in mind.”

She waved her hand in the air. “Well, have at it,” she said. “I’m always open to ideas.”

It was now or never, so I took a breath, trying to go for now.

“I’ve taken a lot of photographs during the years I’ve been working on ‘Checking Out.’ Pictures of people’s homes, and I was thinking there was a story to tell around them? The way people live in different places. What that says about how we travel.” I paused. “How we stay.”

Melinda looked thoughtful for a minute, taking it in. “You know, I like it,” she said. “I really like that.”

“You do?”

She nodded. “I can picture you standing in front of a different home every month, vlogging with the people inside.”

She really needed to stop saying “vlogging,” but I was trying to focus on the positive. She liked the idea.

“You think there’s something there?” I said.

“Absolutely,” she said. “And this isn’t an empty promise I’m making you. We will incorporate your vision into this. I want to do that.”

I could tell that she meant it. I could tell that. And then, less than a minute later, I could tell she didn’t care anymore. At least not in terms of where she felt that she needed to go next.

“But, the thing is, Annie, we have a great living and home expert. I need a travel expert. So let’s keep that other idea on the back burner for now. And really enjoy this!”

Really enjoy this. All the signs were telling me to—to invest in my new life here, to move forward toward something entirely new. To move toward this bright new world waiting on the other side of my misshapen marriage, on the other side of a false start. This was the plan, wasn’t it? To figure out how to be brave enough to find the life I wanted. To hold it, once it was found.

Melinda leaned in closer to me, jumping back in. And helping me to take it. The first step.

“So, in the interest of really enjoying this, you pick it,” she said. “Anyplace in the world to do your first ‘Checking In.’ And I mean any place in the world. Where do you want to check in first? Where do you want to go most, Annie?”

Where do I want to go most in the world? The choices were piling up in my mind. Didn’t I just hear an argument for Dublin and Edinburgh and Rome? Couldn’t I make my own, solid argument for any of those places? For the hundreds of other places I was hoping to see?

Except what happened was, I couldn’t. When Melinda actually presented the question to me, I couldn’t make an argument at all. Or at least, not one I believed. Not when I knew there was one place I wanted to go. The one place I wanted to stay.

The one place I’d seen that felt different than the rest—right from the start. From the first time I drove down its sleepy Main Street, past the church steeple and the post office, all the Christmas trees still standing, light snow falling onto the remnants of a previous day’s thick snowfall. And suddenly I knew why. Why I’d felt so content that day. It hadn’t been about finding someplace new to explore, or escaping to a new life. It was about the person beside me. It was about what happened when we were together—what had been happening, for me, from the very start.

Which is when I stood up.

“Melinda, thank you so much for this opportunity,” I said. “It is so generous, and I can’t tell you how much it means to me.”

She gave me her smile, beaming it right up at me.

“But I quit.”

“What?” she said. I thought she was going to fall right out of her ballet slippers.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “You deserve a better explanation than this, but I can’t give it to you right now.”

I started picking up my things as fast as I possibly could. Because that was the other thing. When you saw where the truth was, you wanted to get there as quickly as you could, before you lost sight of it again.

“Annie, do you know what you’re giving up?” she said. “If we move forward, by this time next year you’ll be a household name. Who wouldn’t love that?”

Only the person who doesn’t want this anymore, I thought. That person. That person was perhaps the only one who wouldn’t see this as the next step forward. Toward wherever forward was.

“A crazy person, I would guess,” I said. Then I shrugged, apologetically. “ I have to go.”