Sentenced to Life

12

That night Emory told Silas to set up the camera and wait for her. It was 10:00pm. He was freshly showered, in her husbands clothes that she'd washed just for him. They were too tight on his frame but he didn't mind. It just reminded him that Thomas was not his equal in any capacity.

At 10:03 Emory realized she'd forgotten her pen in her bedroom. She excused herself and, for 43 minutes argued loudly with her husband as Silas sat a door away.

"I don't like him in our home. I don't like that you didn't ask. I don't like you going into dark rooms with camera with him—"

Emory ignored him rooting around for her pen.

Thomas sighed. "Are you listening to me?! What is this about anyway? Why the sudden charity? Are you fucking him?"

Silas stared at the camera, and tapped to count the beats that passed before she answered with a resolute no.

"I don't have time for this," she muttered instead, grabbing her pen.

"Should we just divorce then?" Thomas demanded, pulling his trump card. "You're clearly not in love with me anymore Emory."

She shrugged. "Yeah sure why not."

He stared at her blankly. "...What?"

Emory scoffed and shrugged. "I'm agreeing. I clearly don't have the same feelings I used to for you and you—I don't know if you ever had feelings for me so." She twirled her pen between her fingers. "Let's do it."

Thomas swallowed roughly. "That's it?"

Emory pursed her lips. "What? Were you expecting me to have some big blow out? Cry, and scream, and throw shit and cut myself and beg you to stay?"

Thomas looked away. "It's what you usually do."

"Maybe I'm better. Maybe I'm different. Maybe I'm not 17 anymore;" she shrugged. "Could have something to do with it."

He scoffed. "So reasonable. No tantrum, Emory?"

She shook her head gently. "No tantrum."

Silas stared at the camera almost unseeingly. She would watch this footage. Watch him, being privy to this moment, through far too late, he suspected, to see his smile.

"I think it's cute." He murmured. "It suits you more than the stoic expression you force."

"Well what does that mean?" Thomas demanded.

Silas scoffed with a smile. "I think," he whispered, "it's clear that means you don't love him anymore. You don't need him. You don't want him."

"It means get a divorce if you want," Emory shot back.

"All this over some bum you just met?"

Silas shook his head. How naive. A child's thinking. "Your marriage was broken a long time ago. I'm just the black coat that spots happen to show on," he whispered. "And if he cared...he'd know that."

"At least he's nice to me. He's done more in this house in ten minutes than you've done in ten years!"

Silas stood, and turned his back toward the camera, his fingertips pressing against the wall, as their marriage shattered by his careful hands.

"The best thing for you to do now is retreat," he murmured. "Admit your faults, say you'll do better. The worst thing you could do—"

"That's because he needs a place to live, Emory. Not because he gives a damn."

Silas smiled and then chuckled to himself shaking his head at the folly of the man on the other side.

"...Maybe you do too."