I listened until she finished. Her speech was thoughtful and beautifully structured, the kind of presentation she could deliver at work without a note in sight. I had heard enough genuine emotion in parts of it to believe she wasn't simply lying. But she had still called the affair one mistake, singular, and she had talked about moving forward without offering a clearer account of what had happened. I placed my water glass down and asked her how many times the other man had come to our house.
For a fraction of a second, her expression changed. It was as though she'd expected me to read a familiar script, and I had introduced a line from another play. She looked toward the candle and then back at me. "Why would you ask something like that?" she said. I told her Diane had noticed a visitor's car on multiple evenings when I was away.
Kate's face tightened. "Our neighbor is spying on me now?" she asked. I said Diane had mentioned the car in connection with parking near a hydrant, not as part of any investigation. Kate said that didn't answer why I was discussing our private business with other people. I told her I hadn't told Diane about our marriage and that I was simply asking a question. She shook her head, as though the question itself was evidence I'd come to dinner in bad faith.
"This isn't the point," she said. I asked what the point was if honesty wasn't part of reconciliation. She answered that we would never heal if I kept hunting for reasons to stay hurt. When I asked again how many times he'd been to the house, she told me I was turning a chance to repair the marriage into a punishment. "You're choosing to be angry, Mike. At a certain point, that's not something I can fix for you."
I stared at the candle between us. I didn't feel angry in the way she meant. I felt as though the floor of the conversation kept moving, with every attempt to establish a fact becoming evidence of a fault in me.
I thought of the eleven recorded rides and the neighbor who'd written down a license plate out of civic concern. I thought of the messages that had been open on the laptop and the phrase Kate had used when confronted with them. The problem was not that she couldn't remember an answer. It was that she didn't want the question to matter.
The waiter brought our meals, and we spoke about them with exaggerated courtesy. Kate barely touched hers. She tried twice to return to the future, offering vague ideas about a weekend away and agreeing to make an appointment with a counselor if I insisted. I asked whether she had told the man from work that our relationship was ending. She said she had told him things were complicated and asked why I needed every personal detail of their conversations.