Vachon Imagined

When she stood just outside the vestibule, humming each line of the Sarah McLachlan song as if the melody could carry her into the promises she was about to make, she felt the words flatten on her tongue. They were always like a flute with no chord — breath without resonance, sound without anchor. A promise is only a word, she told herself. But she was offering it with her whole heart.

He was the only man she had ever wanted to marry. Every man before him had made her stomach twist at the thought of vestibules, angelic whispers, pastors with gentle voices and well‑worn counseling scripts. She knew — somewhere deep in the quiet part of her — that those words would fall flat the first time he cheated, the first time she lied, the first time either of them pretended they could belong wholly to one person, to one man.

And yet the counselors always said the same thing: don’t change him. But that was exactly what she tried to do.

She beat against his chest with her longing, handed him the manual, the recipe, the blueprint for loving her. But after eleven years, the chef never came to the kitchen. So instead of speaking, she retreated into silence — and into her own infidelities — places where she could finally admit the truth: he was a wonderful man, but a terrible husband.

Those truths sat on a shelf inside her, quiet but persistent, waiting for the day they would return like a train whistle circling the same track, arriving at the same station again and again. A place where always is a promise, and fulfilling it is a lie.