“No.”
“Did you ever think to call me and ask whether I knew about the company?”
“No.”
“Then you didn’t trust me enough to ask the truth, but you trusted my husband enough to help him move my money.”
She wept quietly.
“I know.”
I waited for the anger to pass through me.
Finally, I said, “I hope you tell the investigators everything you know. Not to save your marriage. Not to punish Sean. Because it’s the truth.”
“I will.”
I ended the call.
I didn’t feel victorious.
I felt sad.
That was the part nobody tells you about betrayal. Sometimes the person who hurts you isn’t a stranger you can easily hate. Sometimes it’s someone whose laughter you recognize from a hundred happy memories, someone who once held your hand when you were afraid, someone whose children called you family.
Losing that person is a kind of grief.
But grief doesn’t mean you have to invite them back into your life.
