Chapter 7
Before I confronted him, I wanted to hear my own thoughts again.
“I’m not mad,” I said.
It was partly true.
Anger had not arrived yet.
What I felt was colder.
“I’m thinking.”
“About what?”
“Things.”
His eyes narrowed slightly.
That tiny reaction told me more than a confession might have.
If Mark truly believed there was nothing wrong, my thinking should not have frightened him.
But it did.
I walked for almost two hours.
I passed houses with bicycles in driveways and pumpkins on porches.
I watched a young father chase a little boy down the sidewalk.
I watched an older couple hold hands while waiting for a traffic light.
For years, I had looked at strangers like that and imagined they possessed something more secure than I did.
Now I wondered what happened behind every closed door.
Then I became angry at myself for thinking that way.
Mark’s betrayal did not make every marriage a lie.
It made ours wounded.
There was a difference.
When I returned, he was sitting in the living room with his laptop open but his attention fixed on the front window.
“You were gone a while.”
“Yes.”
“Did you go anywhere?”
“I walked.”
“For two hours?”
“Yes.”
His jaw tightened.
I hung up my coat.
“You see how this feels?” I asked.
“What?”
“Wondering where someone was.”
He stared at me.
Then his face hardened.
“Is that what this is? You’re trying to teach me some lesson?”
“No.”
“Because if you’re angry about Wednesday, I told you there was a client problem.”
“I know what you told me.”
The words came out before I could stop them.
Mark froze.
For a second, neither of us spoke.
I could almost see him examining the sentence.
Not what happened.
What you told me.
I walked upstairs before he could ask anything else.
That evening, he stayed home.
So did he Monday.
Tuesday, he was home at 6:40.
Wednesday, at 6:12.
The woman who hated Wednesdays would have been disappointed.
I wondered whether Mark had warned her.
I hated myself for wondering.
I did not want her inside my mind.
I did not know her.
She had made choices I could not respect, assuming she knew Mark was married, but she was not the person who had promised me anything.
Mark was.
That distinction became important.
It kept my anger pointed in the right direction.
On Thursday afternoon, my phone buzzed.