I found a therapist. Dr. Alisha Vance (no relation, her website kindly specified). Her bio online specialized in "intimacy issues" and "relational trauma" Relational trauma.
The clinical phrase sat in my stomach like a cold stone. Was that what we had? Not a betrayal by a third party, but a slow-motion collision we had inflicted on each other?
We had done this. Not Eva. Us. Our first appointment was booked for a week later. That intervening week became a strange, liminal purgatory. The immense, crushing pressure to instantly "fix it" was temporarily lifted, outsourced to a future, professional third party. In its place settled a nervous, observational quiet.
We moved through the house not as combatants, but as tentative researchers, studying each other anew. Not for evidence of guilt,
