Shhh nonny. Never apologize for asking for more stuff about the Liebermans. We all need more stuff about the Liebermans.

Sarah Lieberman was a widow up until yesterday. She has been a widow for almost a year. Has lived the life of one, pretending that she’s carrying on, holding it together for the kids, saying “it’s hard, but you know, we’re doing all right” whenever the neighbors ask. She’s never wanted to look like how she feels. She has never wanted to tell anyone about the midday bottles of wine, the late-night television by herself, crying so hard she couldn’t breathe at something stupid like a commercial for medicine for older men. Just kept looking at the smiling mid-sixties couple talking about their new lease on life, running around with the grandkids, starting new hobbies, and all she could think was that she and David would never have that. You’re supposed to be a widow when you’re seventy, not forty. You’re supposed to have more time.

And yet, after everything that has gone on – Pete Castliglione (or, indeed, Frank, as Sarah now properly calls him in her head, and her thoughts have not yet gone far from him) and the trauma of once more believing she saw David die, and the discovery of all the reasons he’s lived in his bathrobe in a basement for a year, running an impromptu spy nest – the impossible has happened. The hands of the clock have spun back, the irreparable has been repaired, it was indeed (how many times did she pray for this?) just a bad dream. The Lieberman family isn’t particularly religious, goes to synagogue on the High Holidays and they’ll have a bar mitzvah for Zach next year, but Sarah struggles to account for this. She doesn’t know whether it makes her believe more or less. Nothing makes sense. She is a wife again. They have the chance to grow old. See your doctor for unexpected side effects.

Sarah is happy, she is happy, she is happy. David is the love of her life and they have been together since that party in college. She still remembers them trying to discuss Proust (it was History of the French Novel after all, and she got a B- on the final paper) rather than pretend they didn’t want to make out. David is back. David has cleared his name. David is home. She wakes up with him in the bed again, with him shaving in the bathroom, with all his tech shit scattered in the home office. “David,” she says, “empty the dishwasher,” and “David, can you pick Leo up from soccer practice,” and all the thousand and one other banal utterances she thought she would never say again. She cherishes them.

Explaining it to the neighbors is a little harder. Sarah goes with some version of David having to stay away for his own safety, makes it as unthreatening and ordinary as she can, even if there’s nothing ordinary about it. The neighbors ask, again, how she’s doing. 

Sarah says, “I’m doing fine.”

It’s a few weeks after David’s gotten home that they have an argument. It starts out about something stupid, then swings into why he couldn’t just get a message to them somehow, especially if he has been watching them on cameras the whole time (Sarah found out about those, and no, she’s not very thrilled, even if it means he missed less of their lives than she feared). Why let them believe it? She could have kept a secret. She could have done it, to protect him. Why didn’t he trust her? Why didn’t he trust them?

“I’m sorry,” David says, ashen-faced. “I couldn’t take the risk. I – just couldn’t. Sarah, I’m sorry, I’m – I’m sorry.”

She could make him suffer more, she could hold it over his head, she could lash and rage and storm, and somewhere, Sarah thinks, someday, maybe she will. She reminds herself to keep her voice down so not as to wake the kids, and looks at him and finds the anger draining out of her. Goes to him and lets him take her in his arms, and they go upstairs to bed to reconcile yet again. God, it is good to have her husband again, whole and healthy and real. She wraps her arms around him as they lie together in the quilts of their bed, on the mattress they first bought after they were married. They could get another one, Sarah thinks. They could do all the things, press play from where they left off.

“I love you,” David whispers into her hair, as they lie there in the dark. “I love you, and I’m so sorry.”

“I know.” She brushes her fingers over his chin, feels her lips tremble, wonders what it is that makes her entire chest, her fragile heart, shiver and spin like a coin flicked with a thumb. Joy and gratitude and humble reverence, and an aching grief still too savage to hold for long, lest it cut her fingers raw. “I know, David. Let’s just… let’s just let it rest for now.”

He agrees, and pulls her into his arms, and Sarah closes her eyes and buries her face in his shoulder, breathing deep and slow. She can tell when he has fallen asleep, she always can. Then she kisses his cheek, and slides back, and gazes at him in the moonlight. He looks almost as if he is at peace again. She would burn the world for it, for him, for this, for them.

Sarah watches him a moment longer, and then she gets up. Goes quietly to sit on the bathroom floor, in the cold, not knowing why she does, when a warm bed and a loving husband waits for her, but some ghosts are not yet banished, some wounds not yet healed. She stares into the night, as the world rushes endlessly on, turns and turns, and to herself, then, she weeps.