I felt something crack inside my chest.
I wanted to throw the phone across the room. I wanted to run outside and demand an explanation. I wanted to scream his name so loudly that the entire neighborhood would hear what kind of man he had become.
Instead, I put the phone back exactly where I had found it.
Then I walked to the bathroom, closed the door, and sat on the edge of the bathtub.
I cried silently.
Not because I believed I was too old to be loved by someone else. Not because I thought another woman could take away my worth.
I cried because I had spent forty years believing that our shared history meant something sacred.
I had believed that even when passion changed, even when our bodies aged and our lives became routine, we would always protect one another from the kind of humiliation that destroys a person’s trust.
