Chapter 10
His tone changed.
"Can you please come back so we can talk?"
"We can talk on Monday."
"Why Monday?"
"Because I want a weekend without you."
He inhaled.
"You're punishing me."
I closed my eyes.
There it was again.
Everything filtered through his experience.
My leaving punished him.
My questions accused him.
My sadness pressured him.
My boundaries embarrassed him.
"What happened with Lauren?" I asked.
He hesitated.
"She left."
"Why?"
"Because the situation became uncomfortable."
Despite everything, I laughed.
"What?"
"Nothing."
"You think this is funny?"
"No. I think you genuinely don't hear yourself anymore."
He went quiet.
I continued.
"Did you sleep with her?"
"Natalie."
"Yes or no."
"It's complicated."
"No, it isn't."
"There are things about us you refuse to acknowledge."
That sentence landed harder than I expected.
Not because I believed it justified anything.
Because part of me had spent months anticipating it.
The inevitable rewriting of history.
Our marriage had flaws.
Of course it did.
I had been impatient sometimes.
Adrian withdrew under pressure, and I tended to push harder when he did.
We had gone through stretches where work consumed us.
After my mother's death, I had been sad for months, and Adrian had carried more of our daily life than I could manage.
Later, during a difficult year at his company, I had done the same for him.
We were not perfect.
But there is a particular cowardice in using ordinary marital imperfections as retroactive permission for betrayal.
"What don't I acknowledge?" I asked.
"You haven't been happy."
"That's true."
"Neither have I."
"Then you could have told me."
"I tried."
"No. You told me I was stressed every time I noticed you pulling away."
He was silent.
I continued.
"You told me nothing was wrong. You told me Lauren was a colleague. You told me I was imagining things. And yesterday you brought her home."
"We weren't planning to do anything in front of you."
I actually pulled the phone away and stared at it.
When I put it back to my ear, I said, "Do you hear what you just said?"
"I mean, I thought you might stay with Emily."
"You thought I might vacate my home so you could bring another woman there."
"That's not what I said."
"It is exactly what you said."
He exhaled sharply.
"This is why talking to you is impossible."
Something in me relaxed.
For months, that sentence had terrified me.