“Daniel, please.”
“When did it start?”
She gripped the phone so tightly her knuckles turned white. “March.”
Six months. I pictured half a year of ordinary evenings, of birthdays and work lunches and small familiar arguments, each one taking place beside a hidden second relationship. In June, on our anniversary, Ryan had sent us flowers. In July, he'd offered to drive Natalie to the airport for a conference. In August, he'd stood at my backyard grill while I cooked hamburgers and asked whether we should all take a vacation together before winter.
I looked at the woman standing in front of me. “You let me ask whether there was someone. You stood in the kitchen and told me you wanted to explore. All that time it was my best friend.”
“There were other people. The trip wasn't only about him.”
I almost laughed at the desperation of that defense. “You think that makes it better?”
“No. That's not what I mean.”
“Then tell me what you mean, because I'm trying very hard not to lose my mind.”
She sank onto the armchair by the window. “I was confused. Ryan listened. I felt invisible here. You were always working, always worried about the company, always telling me we'd take a vacation when things settled down. With him, I felt seen.”
“Ryan owns part of the company I was working to keep alive. He saw exactly how many hours it took.”
“That's not fair to me.”
“I don't know how to be fair to you right now.”
She began to cry in earnest, shoulders shaking, words tumbling over each other. She said she'd been unhappy for a long time. She said she'd tried to tell me and had given up. She said Ryan had never meant to become important. She said it was supposed to end after a single night, then after a weekend, then after a conversation they kept postponing. I sat down across from her and listened until she ran out of explanations. At no point did she say she'd forgotten what our vows meant. She had remembered them; she had simply wanted a way around them that didn't cost her the life we had built.
I told her the divorce would proceed. She asked whether we could wait thirty days. I said waiting wouldn't make six months disappear. She asked whether I could forgive her. I said I might someday forgive her enough to stop carrying anger, but forgiveness and reconciliation were not the same thing. She asked whether I still loved her. That was the question I dreaded most because I didn't know how to lie.
“Yes,” I said. “Part of me probably will for a long time. That's why this hurts.”