“Are you and Daniel hiding something from me?”
She stared at the floor.
“Please.”
“Please what?”
“I don’t know what you think you saw.”
“That’s the problem.”
She started crying.
And somehow, seeing her cry made me more frightened than if she had admitted everything.
“Rachel?”
She covered her face.
“I never wanted this to happen.”
My heart sank.
“What happened?”
She looked at me.
“Nothing happened.”
I almost screamed.
“Then why are you crying?”
She couldn’t answer.
I sat beside her.
For several seconds, neither of us spoke.
Finally she whispered,
“Daniel told me he was unhappy.”
I stared at her.
“With me?”
She nodded.
“And you believed him?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did he say he wanted to leave me?”
She shook her head.
“No.”
“Then what?”
“He said he felt lonely.”
I stood up.
“And you became the person he talked to.”
She cried harder.
“I was trying to help.”
“Were you?”
She looked at me.
“I should have told you.”
“Yes.”
“I should have stopped talking to him.”
“Yes.”
“But I swear to you, I never slept with him.”
I closed my eyes.
There it was.
The sentence I had been terrified to hear.
And somehow, it wasn’t the sentence I expected.
