We sat across the table like people meeting about a property dispute, which was exactly what we were doing. Elise reviewed the outstanding vendor records, and Priya explained which documents my company had already supplied. The accountants had identified the consulting payments that were properly authorized, the attempted payments that had been blocked, and a smaller sum for which the services remained unverified. There were legal questions still to resolve, but the documents were much clearer than they had been when Ryan controlled the flow of information.
Ethan asked whether the youth program's scheduled bookings would be affected. I told him Copper & Bloom could complete the existing event calendar, but that we should arrange a different outside coordinator for the future. It would be difficult for the staff to keep working under the shadow of our private disaster. He nodded and asked Dana to prepare a handover that wouldn't disrupt the school groups.
I watched him discuss the nonprofit and wondered how I'd convinced myself for months that he cared only about his building. He was worried about the children who had already been told where to show up on Saturday. His father had believed a room mattered most when people who had nowhere else to go were welcome in it. Ethan had inherited that belief so completely that I had begun to see it as a limitation rather than a kind of strength.
After the financial questions, Priya and Elise stepped out to allow us a few minutes of private conversation. They had asked us both beforehand whether we were comfortable with it, and Ethan had agreed on the condition that the conversation not become a negotiation about the business. I had rehearsed an apology in the car. When we were finally alone, every elegant sentence I'd prepared disappeared.
"I know you don't have to listen to me," I began. "But I'm sorry. For the affair, for lying when you asked me directly, for bringing you to that bar, and for wanting you to be ashamed in front of people. Ryan was manipulating me about the property, but he didn't make me say those things. I did."
Ethan looked at the tabletop. For a moment I thought he would tell me I had been fooled and that everything was complicated. Instead he said, "Thank you for saying it without an excuse."
"I keep thinking about that night."
"So do I."
"I wish I could change it."
He nodded slowly. "I know. But if we were going to save anything, it would have had to happen before that night. We had been losing each other for a long time. I was willing to work on that part. You made a different choice."
I wanted to remind him that he'd worked late, that he had been emotionally absent, that our marriage had become a place where every conversation ended with an unfinished task. All those things were worth discussing in an honest account of how we had drifted apart. None of them answered the question of why I had decided to punish him instead of leave him openly.