I Let You Go

by Clare Mackintosh

They exchanged half-smiles in mutual acknowledgment of the adrenaline rush it always felt so wrong to enjoy when something so horrific had happened.

Is it possible to simply walk away from one life and start another?

I wanted to walk away from this book.

Precious photographs. So few for someone so loved. Such a small impact on the world, yet the very center of my own.

“I guess when you marry into the job you have to accept the crappy conditions with it.”

Except this one time, he added silently. One tiny lapse of concentration, and she wouldn’t ever be able to forgive herself for it.

I let him go, and I will never forgive myself for that.

Gradually, without my noticing, my grief has changed shape; from a raw, jagged pain that won’t be silenced to a dull, rounded ache I’m able to lock away at the back of my mind. If it is left there, quiet and undisturbed, I find I’m able to pretend that everything is quite all right. That I never had another life.

You can tell a lot about someone by the way they treat animals,

“You stood next to me, and you promised to love, honor, and obey me as long as we both shall live.”

I denied anything was wrong: first because I was too blinded by love to see the cracks in my relationship, and later because I was too ashamed to admit that I had stayed for so long with a man who hurt me so much.