I wasn’t certain whether he was thanking me for the eggs or for something larger. I decided it didn’t need to be one thing or the other.
## Priya’s Assessment
I met Priya for lunch about a month after the trip. She had been listening to the various installments of all of this and had, characteristically, reserved most of her opinions until she had the full picture.
“So,” she said. “Where are you?”
“In progress,” I said.
“But not done?”
“No. I don’t think you get done. I think you either keep working on it or you stop.”
She stirred her coffee. “Are you glad you didn’t go?”
I thought about it properly, the way she always makes me think about things properly.
“I’m glad I made a clear choice,” I said. “I don’t know if not going was the right choice in some absolute sense. I know it was honest. I know it said something I had been failing to say for years.”
“What did it say?”
“That I’m not endlessly available to absorb whatever the marriage needs me to absorb.” I paused. “That I have a point past which I don’t bend.”
“Nathan didn’t know that?”
“I think he knew it in theory,” I said. “I don’t think he’d ever seen it.”
Priya nodded. “What about you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Did you know it? Before this?”
I looked at her. “I thought I did.”
She looked back at me with the expression she has when she knows exactly what she’s not going to say.