On our 25th day of sheltering-in-place, my husband packed a suitcase and a brown paper bag of food and moved into an Airbnb some two miles away. Our quarter-century-long marriage was faltering, and we needed time apart, so off he went.

For the previous 24 days, the five of us — our son, Tyler; his girlfriend, Irina; our daughter, Alexa; and my husband and I — had been cocooned, venturing from the house only a few times for necessities. No more business travel for me. No more long commutes and late hours for Jason. No more college dorm for Alexa. No apartment of their own for Tyler and Irina, who came home to avoid pandemic-related risks from roommates.

We ordered puzzles and games, walked our dog on the strangely empty streets, made coffee and eggs, passed each other in the kitchen on breaks between Zoom meetings, and then met again sometime after 6 p.m. to make dinner. Alexa and Irina hovered close to me, asking a year’s worth of questions in less than a month: “When do you add the salt?” “How do you zest a lemon?” “Show me how you make the pasta.”

Then, on Day 25, everything broke. As I lay on the cool tile of the bathroom, my hand to my mouth so the kids wouldn’t hear me cry, Jason left. And in his absence, days passed as if I were underwater: breathless, floating, murky. My heart leapt around so much that my doctor ordered an EKG, which, on two separate readings, showed anomalies.

“I want you to wear a Holter monitor,” she said.

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But I couldn’t stand the thought of something so close to my erratic heart. She prescribed small, white pills, which I nibbled on.

My friends said Jason was having a midlife crisis.

Yes, I suppose, but naming something — even something as clichéd and common as a midlife crisis — did nothing for my aching heart. My husband (perhaps my soon to be ex-husband?) came and went, toggling between his Airbnb and visits with the children.

On one visit, he said, “I joined Match. I just wanted you to know.”

I nodded, went inside and made my own Match account. I cropped pictures, removing my husband’s smiling face, so I could post just me on this adult version of truth or dare. Truth in text, dare for a call? I wouldn’t dare all the way to an in-person meeting during these virus-strangled times. Nor, Jason promised, would he.

“I think things happen for a reason,” he said. “The quarantine means neither of us can really leave.”

But in a way, I did leave; I left my life as I knew it. I drank too much and ate too little. I slept too little and thought too much.

I cropped more photos, swiped left and right, bantered online with different men. I eliminated smokers, motorcyclists and those who confused “your” for “you’re.” I stopped staring at old family photos and started scrutinizing pre-pandemic pictures of men at the beach, on vacation, in suits, in offices. My husband had lifted the veil, and I peered out at a world I had never seen before, a world full of different people and alternate possibilities.

Mother’s Day fell on Day 48, more than three weeks after Jason left. Alexa, who generally shies away from arts and crafts, made a sign that spelled “Happy Mother’s Day” in dangling paper letters. I touched each letter, wiping my tears, trying to remind myself that no matter what — Covid-19, divorce, death — I was still a mother.

I was starting to fade, though. I stopped cooking and barely ate.

Tyler, who used to say, as a 4-year-old with a lisp, “You’re a good cooker, Mama,” began saying, “You’re awfully tiny, Mama.”

We still gathered in the kitchen every night, just the four of us, the empty fifth chair carefully ignored, but food overwhelmed me. Hunger and habit left. I didn’t realize the refrigerator was nearly empty until Tyler and Irina returned from Trader Joe’s.

Irina handed me a bouquet of pink roses and held me as I cried. Tyler, who had woken me at 2 a.m. with a panic attack, stood close and wiped his eyes in the way he used to after toddler naps. I wished I had a blankie for him, for all of us.

Day 66 marked Irina’s birthday, but the pandemic eliminated most celebration choices. I touched my Mother’s Day sign like a talisman and asked Alexa to swap out the “S” and “E” with a “B” and “I” and to rearrange the letters to spell “Happy Birthday.” We hung the reconfigured sign outside for a socially distanced dinner with the few in our pod, including Jason, which felt both awkward and normal.

I started to take long walks; Jason bought a bike.

“The mornings are the hardest,” he said. “I’m lonely.”

Mornings were easier for me, the light in the window reminding me that the sun still rose, no matter my sadness. It was nights when I struggled, afraid of the dark, of sleep or no sleep, of dreams and memories.

Days passed, still formless and jumbled. I turned off the camera during work Zoom calls and lay my head on the desk. After dark, Alexa curled next to me as we watched mindless TV.

“I’m not just sad,” she said. “It’s more intense than that. I feel like my whole life got turned upside down.”

“It did,” I said, hugging her close.

Weeks passed. Jason biked, I Bumbled. We hissed, whispered, yelled, stood silent. He came and went from his Airbnb, so close and at such a distance.

I walked and walked, gradually reclaiming myself like a dimmer switch turning on. I stopped the white pills, started eating, sleeping, reading, even smiling. Jason came by to take out the trash cans, to fill my car with gas. He brought groceries, dog food, my favorite iced coffee. He asked me over for dinner and we ate quietly in his little place, as nervous as a blind date. We were tender and awkward, vacillating between passion and pain.

“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I want to come home. I miss you.”

“You miss me or our life?”

“You,” he said. “It’s you.”

At first his words were quiet and unconvincing. And the veil was lifted: I went back and forth between memories of our 29 years together and flirty text messages from Match and Bumble. I wondered about the next 29 years and what I wanted.

Jason bought me a bike. We rode miles at the beach in masked silence. Sitting on the empty sand after, he leaned over and said, “May I kiss you?”

I leaned in, opening my lips to him. He tasted both nostalgic and new. “So strange,” I said, and he looked as if he might cry. I was sad and present and hopeful. The future, however uncertain, was right there in front of us.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, but not so often as to sound untrue. “I understand you need time. Just know I miss you and love you so.”

I weighed 29 years with the man who is the father of my children, who knew my grandparents, whom I most love to be with, against a new chapter of different possibilities. I thought of the years between us and the years ahead.

On Day 98, we celebrated Tyler’s birthday. California started to reopen. I tied my apron and made Tyler’s favorites: onion dip, pasta salad, chocolate chip cookie pie.

“You’re chefing again, Mama,” Tyler said.

We celebrated outside under the dangling sign that still read “Happy Birthday.”

“I love you,” Jason said as he left our little party, and I remembered us as new parents in the delivery room, too excited and in love to know how hard it could be.

“I love you, too,” I said.

Alexa’s birthday came on Day 109, 84 days after Jason left. The five of us ate blueberry crumble under the sign, and after Alexa blew out the candles, Jason cleared his throat and said, his voice cracking, “I want to say how sorry I am for everything. Mom and I have decided — I’m moving home.”

The next morning, he came back with his suitcase and more bags of food than he left with all those months ago.

We had stood on the edge, teetered and stumbled. When he had wanted to jump, I’d pulled him back. When I stepped forward, he grabbed me. Ultimately, we held hands, each keeping the other from falling until we could turn around and choose each other again. We have learned enough to know that the cliff is always there, and that to love is to choose and keep choosing.

Michelle White is a writer in Los Angeles.

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