But I had believed those were things we faced together.
“You weren’t happy,” I repeated. “And instead of telling me, you found someone else.”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Then explain it to me.”
He couldn’t.
Or perhaps he simply didn’t want to.
He stood, took his keys from the counter, and said he needed some time to think.
Before he reached the door, I asked one final question.
“Does Susan know that you still come home every night and tell me you love me?”
He stopped.
He didn’t turn around.
That was the moment I understood that the affair was not an isolated mistake. It was a life he had been maintaining through a thousand deliberate decisions.
He left without answering.
That night, I slept alone in our bedroom for the first time in forty-two years.
At three in the morning, I got out of bed and walked through the house.
