She sat across from me. The chair she chose was the one where she'd planned her birthday dinner last year, drawing little diagrams of the seating arrangement on the back of a grocery receipt. I remembered laughing as she tried to make sure her aunt and my mother wouldn't argue about politics. I remembered thinking I was lucky to have a wife who cared about whether everybody at the table felt included.
"I was lonely," she said. "You were always at work. When you were home, you were exhausted. We stopped talking about anything except bills, subcontractors, and what needed fixing. Colin listened to me."
I felt each sentence land. There were things worth examining in what she said; I knew I had spent too many evenings answering work calls through dinner, and that I sometimes thought a problem fixed was the same thing as a person cared for. But Sabrina had been working late, too. She had missed anniversaries of small things, forgotten plans, and fallen asleep beside me with a laptop open on her knees.
"If you were lonely," I said, "why didn't you tell me?"
"I did. You didn't hear me."
"Then you could have said you wanted counseling. You could have said you wanted to separate. You could have refused to keep pretending." I swallowed. "You could have done a hundred things that didn't include Colin Mercer and a hotel room."
She looked at the table. "It wasn't supposed to become this."
"How long?"
"Reid—"
"How long, Sabrina?"
For the first time since she walked in, her face showed something beyond desperation: calculation. She was deciding what number might hurt me enough to seem honest but not enough to end the conversation. I could see the decision being made, and something inside me grew very still.
"Since July," she said.
It was November. Four months, if she was telling the truth. I remembered July: a weekend trip to the shore we'd postponed because she had a work deadline, an anniversary dinner we'd rescheduled for the same reason, a long Sunday when she'd come home from a conference smelling of sunscreen and told me she wished we had taken a real vacation. I had believed the sadness in her voice was disappointment about work.
"Was he at the conference in July?"
She said nothing. I nodded. There were no more questions that could make that first night better, only answers that would keep hurting until I had no strength left to carry them. I told her I was not going to spend the night arguing, and that she needed to find somewhere else to sleep for a few days while I worked out what to do.
"You're throwing me out of my own house?" she demanded.
"I'm asking you to stay with your sister tonight. If you want a lawyer to explain our rights to the house, we'll do that tomorrow. I'm not changing the locks. I'm not pretending you have no right to be here." I pushed the glass away. "I am telling you I cannot share a bedroom with you tonight."