The Break

by Katie Sise

We tell ourselves all kinds of stories about our past. And maybe we even convince ourselves they’re true. I tell myself and everyone else that I live in the sordid worlds of my novels because of my father’s stabbing. That I write mysteries with heroines who solve them because I could never solve his murder. I have no idea whether these things make me a good writer or a good liar.

Sometimes when I glance around everything feels wrong, like I accidentally chose the wrong life—the wrong man?—and now I can’t claw my way back to everything that was meant to be. But that can’t be right: I love Gabe, and I certainly love Lila. Everything is as it’s supposed to be. And I’ll get better, I will. I have to believe that.

Maybe marriage hardens things for every couple, makes the edges sharper and dulls the surface so it isn’t a shiny, perfect thing anymore.

We’re all walking around with these big brains that can misfire and split and repress and obsess or hurtle into insanity at any second.