“Yes.”
“Then tell me everything.”
There was a long pause.
Finally, she said, “Dad met Rebecca before he met you.”
I stopped pacing.
“What?”
“They knew each other when they were young.”
“How young?”
“College.”
My mind moved backward through years.
Michael had attended Northwestern.
He rarely talked about those years.
I had assumed it was because his parents’ divorce had happened around that time and because he had worked constantly to pay tuition.
“Were they together?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did they have an affair while we were married?”
“No.”
“You sound very certain.”
“Because Dad swore they didn’t.”
“And you believed him?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because he cried.”
My anger faltered.
Michael had not been a man who cried easily.
Even when his mother died, he had stood beside her hospital bed with his jaw locked and tears sitting in his eyes without falling.
The night our son Ryan nearly died from pneumonia at six years old, Michael had spent hours pacing the pediatric ward.
