One evening, she called me.
“I want to thank you.”
“For what?”
“For not hating me.”
I was quiet.
“I hated you for a long time,” I admitted.
“I know.”
“But you weren’t the person who betrayed me.”
She started crying.
Neither of us said anything for a while.
Then she whispered, “I’m sorry.”
“I know.”
For the first time, I meant it when I said I was okay.
Not because everything had been repaired.
It hadn’t.
Some things never are.
But I had stopped waiting for Daniel to give me closure.
I was finally giving it to myself.
Chapter 5 — What I Found After Losing Him
Two years earlier, I thought Daniel leaving me was the worst thing that could ever happen to me.
I was wrong.
The worst thing would have been spending the rest of my life believing his version of what happened.
For months after the investigation began, I had to rebuild everything.
My finances.
My confidence.
My relationship with my children.
Even my understanding of myself.
I had spent so much time wondering why I wasn’t enough for Daniel.
Why he wanted someone younger.
Why he seemed happier without me.
Why seventeen years together could apparently mean so little.
