"No."
"Then why do you keep defending him?"
"I'm not."
"I am finally not defending me from every uncomfortable fact."
She looked at me strangely.
"Therapy made you annoying."
"Probably."
My mother cried the first time I apologized to her for hanging up.
Margaret took longer.
For months, she was polite and cold.
I resented it.
Then remembered that she had watched her son come to her house at midnight looking devastated.
She was allowed feelings too.
Eventually, at June's seventh birthday party, I found Margaret alone in the kitchen cutting fruit.
I said:
"I owe you an apology."
She kept slicing strawberries.
"For what part?"
Despite myself, I laughed.
She almost did too.
Then I said:
"For making you the enemy because you protected Simon."
Margaret put down the knife.
"I wasn't always fair to you either."
That surprised me.
"I was angry."
"I said things to Simon about you that weren't helpful."
"Parents can become very stupid when their adult children hurt."
We hugged.
Not perfectly.
Enough.
Six months after the party, Simon and I had to make a decision.
Reconciliation or divorce.
Dr. Feld asked us separately before discussing it together.
I wanted reconciliation.
Mostly.
Simon did too.
Mostly.
That was the problem.
Marriage cannot be rebuilt on mostly if mostly means fear of loss rather than desire for the person.
We spent one session talking about what returning home would actually require.
Transparency.
Boundaries with friends.
Direct communication.
Regular time together.
No public airing of private disputes.
No using June.
No emotional bookkeeping.
Simon would have to stop treating work and family logistics as substitutes for intimacy.
I would have to stop using outside attention to measure my value.
Trust would take time.
We both agreed.
Then Simon said:
"I don't know whether I can stop seeing that night when I look at her."
I cried.
He cried too.
It was the first time I had seen him cry since his grandfather's funeral.
"I want to," he said.
"I keep trying."
"But sometimes I'm back in that chair."
"I say don't."
"Everyone laughs."
"You pull away from me."
"And then I watch my best friend kiss my wife."
I reached for his hand.
He let me hold it.
That almost made it worse.
"I don't know if loving you is enough to make that disappear."
Dr. Feld said quietly:
"It doesn't have to disappear."
"The question is whether both of you can build something that can exist honestly beside it."
We tried.
For another three months.
Dinner once a week without June.
Counseling.
Family outings.
No physical intimacy at first.
Then slowly.
There were moments when I thought we would make it.
One Saturday we took June to the zoo.
Simon laughed when a goat stole part of my map.
We ate overpriced ice cream.
On the drive home, June fell asleep.
Simon's hand rested on the center console.
I placed mine over it.
He did not pull away.
For twenty miles, I believed we were going home.