Yet when he smiled at me that evening, I wondered how many times he had smiled at another woman while I was waiting for him at home.
“Robert,” I said quietly, “we need to talk.”
He stopped moving.
Something changed in his expression.
Not confusion.
Recognition.
I took my phone from the table and placed it in front of him.
“Who is she?”
He looked at the photograph.
For several seconds, he said nothing.
Then he lowered himself into the chair opposite mine.
“Margaret, I can explain.”
Those five words were enough.
I had heard them from friends whose husbands had been unfaithful. I had heard them in television dramas. I had even heard them from our daughter when she was young and had broken a neighbor’s window.
But I had never imagined hearing them from my own husband.
“Explain what?” I asked. “The photograph? The messages? Or the eight months you’ve apparently spent building a second life?”
