“No,” he said.
“We didn’t.”
I folded the letter and held it in both hands.
Down the hall, Diane was sitting on a bench by the window.
Claire was beside her.
They weren’t talking.
Claire was looking at her phone.
Diane was looking at nothing.
“She said she didn’t think I was right for you,” I said.
“I know.”
“Did she ever say that to you?”
Nathan let out a slow breath.
“Not in those words.
But she made it clear, over the years, that she had reservations.”
“And you never told me.”
“I didn’t want to put you in the middle of it.”
I looked at him.
“Nathan.
I’ve been in the middle of it for ten years.
I just didn’t know.”
He didn’t answer that.
There was nothing to answer.
The thing was, I could see it now — the shape of the last decade rearranging itself.
Small moments I had misread.
Times I had felt Diane’s coolness and assumed it was just her personality.
Times Nathan had smoothed things over so quickly I hadn’t thought to ask why.
He hadn’t been hiding an affair.
He had been managing a situation he didn’t know how to name.
That didn’t make it right.
