At the gravel lot just off of Route 21, where there is nothing but fields in every direction, James stood two heads above mine, with his round glasses slightly crooked as they usually were. The clouds had come in quickly, not in the way where I might yet anticipate rain, just in the way where they filter the light and leave everything with a grayish hue. This is where he said that he loved me, and because he loved me, he had to leave me, and because he had to leave me, I wasn’t going to see him again. This is where I stood and tried my hardest to listen, to watch the movement of his mouth and make sense of the noise of his words as they hit my ears, though I couldn’t help but notice how the tall grass all swayed in a familiar rhythm with the wind. And how his hair matched the rhythm just as the grass had. And I had wondered if my own hair had done the same. This is where I still stood as I heard his car start and pull back out onto 21, leaving me to get on my own way.

We had fought in the car ride home from church. He had told me that he couldn’t put up with me anymore, although my mind had been elsewhere. On the blur of the trees through the window as we passed them. I could tell that something was amiss from the morning, when James rose earlier than he usually did, and sat in the armchair across from the mantle. The same one his father had sat in for all those years, before he passed, and we inherited most of his things. I watched him from the awning outside our bedroom as he put on each shoe, one after the other, and how he carefully untied and retied them. How he played with the knot, trying to make it perfect. How he adjusted his glasses. 

I sat on the floor in the hallway with my back against the grandfather clock and waited for him to return. Church wasn’t for another few hours, yet he had dressed and left already. I couldn’t help but fidget with the strands of the carpet and with the fabric of my nightgown, which rested over my knees as I brought them up to my chest. I felt my breathing slow, I felt the ticking of the clock behind me, reverberating against my back. I listened to the stillness of the house, as it swayed ever so slightly with the wind.

James had started to become reserved, sharing less and less with each passing day. But his presence was shifting, too. He used to toss and turn during the late hours of the night, shifting the weight of the bed back and forth. It would sway me to sleep, like a slow rocking boat in a low tide. I used to know every part of him, I could expect when he would turn, anticipating it like a rolling wave that I'd drift overtop of. As of late, he lies still. And I lie still, next to him. I can feel his eyes staring at the ceiling. I wondered if he could feel me, looking too. 

I rose from where I was sitting, making my way down the stairs towards the kitchen. My feet felt cold against the hardwood floor, as though drafts from outside had been sifting through the cracks under the doors. The kitchen was a mess. Dishes piled up against and overflowed out of the sink, and James’s books and papers from his teaching job were stacked high in piles across the countertops. I didn’t work a job, although I wanted to. It just wasn’t something that wives in the middle of nowhere did. That’s all that West Virginia has ever been to me. To anyone. The middle of nowhere. I grew up here, and never had the chance to see anywhere else. My mother had always said, “Nowheres make nobodies.” And she was right.
“We are expected to fit a certain standard,” James had told me when we had first moved in. “The people around here are a bit more traditional.” 

And so we did. I played my part and he played his. The performance of love. Although, as of late, it had more so become the performance of complacency. Of tolerance. I suppose he had begun to get bored with his role, and I with mine. Such is the tale of time. I suppose he had begun to get bored with me.

There, under the kitchen window, I twisted the knob of the stove, listening to the cracks and pops as I held a lighter against it, bringing the flame to life. I set the kettle onto the blackened grates atop the stove, and stepped out of the side door onto the porch that wrapped around to the front. The air was crisp, and my feet were now much colder than before against the faded blue of the painted wood. The birds spoke quietly, and I listened to their flutters as they moved from perch to perch. There, I looked back through the small round window at where I once stood, and imagined myself standing over the stove as I was a minute ago, looking back. I stared into my own eyes, one set bounded by the confines of this house, and one free to roam, to walk in a direction and never look back. One where I was free to just be. One where James and I could walk through town together again, holding hands, shopping for new linens. 

When James returned, he seemed almost startled by my presence in the kitchen, where I now poured the boiling water into a mug and stirred in a teabag that I had found in the back of the pantry. I usually slept in on Sundays, up until about a half hour before church, where I would rise and force myself to change into an outfit I didn’t want to wear. I saw his eyebrows jump, and subsequently, his glasses followed. He hesitated, ever so slightly as he closed the door. He nodded to me.
“Good morning. You’re up early,” he said.

“Yeah. Couldn’t sleep,” I replied. He stepped by me, and made his way around the corner of the kitchen and back up the stairs. 

“We have church in a few, Claire,” he said as he leaned over the awning at the top of the stairs. I nodded, as though he could somehow see me. 

When we had first moved in, he would have loved to see me up so early. He would have sat on the top of the kitchen table and talked to me. He would have gone on and on about architecture or Rome or what he was planning on making for lunch tomorrow. And I would turn and laugh and look at him, and our eyes would meet, and he would tell me that he loved me. He would tell me we could skip church, and go for a walk in the woods, or a picnic at the lake. An outing where we could lay on our backs and watch the clouds drift through. Then I didn’t have to think about listening. Then my hands would slip so effortlessly into his. 

We drove in silence to church, which was about fifteen miles up the road from where we lived. It was a quaint building, with a small playground for the children on the side, and a brick fountain that hadn’t been working since we had started going. James parked on the outskirts and we walked in together, though I dragged slightly behind him. He conversed with people that I could never remember the names of about things I never seemed to care about while I stood next to him, before I eventually walked off to find our usual seats. A lady overdressed in church attire made rounds throughout the aisle, giving each person a yellow pamphlet for today's service. This is where my mind would split into two. A version of myself would stand, leaving my body, and wander through the backrooms of the building, while the other sat quietly and pretended to listen to the pastor go on about love and sanctity. A part of me sat on the swings at the playground just outside, swaying slowly back and forth to the rhythm of the wind. Maybe a younger James and I sat on the swings together, and we might have each leaned over the gap between and kissed. A part of me remained there, by an older James’ side. A part of me didn’t. 

The veil lifted, and I was back in the passenger seat of the car, riding down Route 21, back towards our house. 

“I know what you did this morning,” I started. “I know you were with her.”

James continued to look forward. If he hadn’t responded, I might have thought I never even said anything. 

“You’re never here anymore, Claire.” His hands gripped the steering wheel a bit tighter. “You don’t seem to care about anything. About me, about the house, about the town or the church. You live in your own little bubble. I can’t put up with it anymore.”

It started again, my mind trying to wander. I started to think of James with someone else. About what they might do when no one is looking. I looked to the trees as they passed by, to stop myself. I turned back to look at him. I stayed. Here, with James. 

“You could have told me, James. Why are you sneaking around? Are you too much of a coward just to say you don’t love me anymore?” I said. My hand traced the armrest under the window.

He pulled over, to a gravel lot. 

In every direction were fields. The clouds darkened, pooling together in spirals across the sky. The rain was bound to come eventually. I didn’t mind that. I sat, parting the tall grass, which danced around me with the gusts of wind. James wasn’t on my mind. Instead, my mind was here. On the way the air smelled. On the way my shoes were tied, loosely so the knot laid gently on the top, and shifted with each step. On the way the color of the gravel matched the color of the clouds. On the fact that if I could look myself in the eyes, I’d see only one version. One that is unbound. So I began to walk.