Caroline set down her fork. "Of course you did. It would make the months you spent with him feel less wasted. But whether he loved you is not the question that will make those months honest."
"Then what is?" I asked.
"Why you needed his admiration badly enough to turn against the people who already loved you."
I wanted to tell her she was being harsh. Instead I sat with the question. I had spent years defining myself by being chosen: by clients, by investors, by friends whose approval made me feel important, by a man whose attention seemed more thrilling than the familiar love waiting at home. I had not noticed how quickly a person could become cruel when she believed someone else's admiration was proof of her worth.
I called our mother after dinner. She listened without interrupting while I told her what had happened, including the affair and the public confrontation. When I finally stopped, she asked whether I remembered my father coming home late from the hospital during the year he worked night shifts to pay for my college tuition. Of course I remembered; I had resented his absences as a teenager.
"He wasn't perfect," she said. "Neither was I. But we never taught you that being bored or lonely meant you could use somebody else's heart to make a point. I love you, Claire. I hope you can rebuild a life you're proud of. I also hope you understand that Ethan may decide not to be part of it."
I cried again after we hung up. This time the tears didn't feel like a demand for someone to rescue me. They felt like the beginning of a long, unpleasant education in the difference between regret and responsibility. Regret was wishing the rooftop had never happened. Responsibility was doing what I could to make the truth available without expecting the consequences to disappear.
The first time I saw Ethan after the rooftop was twelve days later, in a conference room on the second floor of a law office near the river. Priya and Elise had arranged a joint meeting about Alder Street's records and the practical separation of our business responsibilities. It was not a reconciliation meeting, though I had spent the entire morning fighting the impulse to treat it as one. I wore a plain navy dress, took off the earrings he'd given me, and arrived twenty minutes early because I didn't trust myself to face him while breathless.
He came in carrying a leather folder with the corners worn smooth from years of use. His hair was a little longer than usual and he looked as though he hadn't slept well. The sight of him without his wedding ring hurt more than I expected. I had watched him remove it in public; seeing his hand bare in an ordinary room made the loss feel permanent in a new way.
"Hello, Claire," he said.
"Hi."