I leaned forward.
“I’m not doing that anymore.”
He nodded slowly.
Then he asked the question I had been expecting.
“Do you hate me?”
I thought about the hotel. The photographs. The financial records. The dinner table. The way Daniel had looked at his wedding ring before leaving it beside Jenna’s plate.
I thought about all the years I had loved Mark.
“No,” I finally said.
He seemed surprised.
“I hate what you did. I hate what it did to our son. I hate that I have to rebuild parts of my life I thought were already settled.”
I paused.
“But if I spend every day hating you, you’ll still be taking up space in my life. I’m trying to make room for something else.”
He looked down at his coffee.
That was the closest thing to closure I gave him.
Daniel’s healing took longer.
He worked his shifts, attended therapy, and slowly began to rebuild a life that no longer revolved around Jenna.
