“What?”
She smiled sadly.
“I haven’t signed anything.”
“Why?”
Her eyes filled with tears.
Because she was finally done pretending.
“Because every major decision I make still starts with wondering what you would think.”
My throat tightened.
“Adanna…”
She laughed through tears.
“I know how ridiculous that sounds.”
“It doesn’t.”
For the first time since our divorce, complete honesty stood between us.
No lawyers.
No custody schedules.
No polite distance.
Just truth.
“I never stopped loving you,” she whispered.
The words hung in the air.
Simple.
Terrifying.
Beautiful.
Neither of us moved.
Then I finally admitted the truth I had hidden from myself.
“Neither did I.”
She stared at me.
Then laughed.
Then cried.
Then laughed again.
The same laugh.
The one that fills an entire room.
A second later, Eke appeared in the hallway.
He looked between us suspiciously.
“Why are you both crying?”
Neither of us answered.
Instead, Adanna pulled him into a hug.
I joined them.
And for a moment, all three of us stood there together.
Nothing was magically fixed.
The reasons for our divorce hadn’t disappeared.
The problems we’d faced were still real.
But something else was real too.
People grow.
People change.
Sometimes the distance between them teaches lessons they could never learn together.
That afternoon, after she left, I stood on the porch watching her car disappear down the street.
For the first time in years, I wasn’t watching someone leave.
I was watching someone come back.
Slowly.
Carefully.
One conversation at a time.
And the wall I had spent two years building?
It was still there.
