The rest of that afternoon passed in small pieces.<\/p>\n
A bottle needed warming.<\/p>\n
Mia needed changing.<\/p>\n
Ava cried because she was tired, then cried again when I tried to put her down.<\/p>\n
The girls didn't understand that anything had changed.<\/p>\n
They still needed the same things they had needed the day before.<\/p>\n
That was a relief.<\/p>\n
It was also exhausting.<\/p>\n
Ryan offered to help several times.<\/p>\n
I accepted some of his offers and declined others.<\/p>\n
When he warmed a bottle, I checked the temperature before giving it to Mia.<\/p>\n
When he changed Ava, I watched from the doorway.<\/p>\n
I didn't mean to make him feel as though he couldn't care for his daughters.<\/p>\n
I simply found myself paying attention to everything.<\/p>\n
The way he held them.<\/p>\n
The way he spoke to them.<\/p>\n
The way he moved through the rooms he had been away from for months.<\/p>\n
I was trying to recognize him.<\/p>\n
I was also trying to understand how the man who had kissed Simone could be so gentle with our children.<\/p>\n
At one point, Ryan carried Ava into the living room and sat with her on the couch.<\/p>\n
She rested against his chest while he spoke softly to her.<\/p>\n
He looked down at her tiny hands.<\/p>\n
I stood near the kitchen entrance, holding Mia.<\/p>\n
For a few seconds, I felt something close to happiness.<\/p>\n
Then I remembered the harbor.<\/p>\n
The feeling disappeared.<\/p>\n
I hated that I couldn't enjoy watching my husband hold his daughter without thinking about another woman.<\/p>\n
I hated that the kiss had entered every ordinary moment of our lives.<\/p>\n
Even so, I knew the kiss wasn't the only problem.<\/p>\n
The larger problem was the truth he had withheld.<\/p>\n
If I had discovered something else about our marriage that morning, something he had hidden for weeks, I might have felt the same way.<\/p>\n
I didn't know how to trust a person who could look me in the eye during a phone call and leave out something that important.<\/p>\n
That evening, after the girls had been fed and settled, I returned to the living room.<\/p>\n
Ryan was sitting on the couch.<\/p>\n
The blue jacket lay folded over the armrest.<\/p>\n
I stopped when I saw it.<\/p>\n
He followed my gaze.<\/p>\n
"I can put that away."<\/p>\n
I shook my head.<\/p>\n
"It doesn't matter."<\/p>\n
But it did.<\/p>\n
The jacket reminded me of the person I had been when I bought it.<\/p>\n
I had been excited about his birthday.<\/p>\n
I had wanted him to feel loved.<\/p>\n
I had imagined him wearing it when we went out together, perhaps with the girls in their stroller.<\/p>\n
I had bought it without questioning whether he deserved it.<\/p>\n
Now I wondered whether that version of me had been foolish.<\/p>\n
Then I realized how unfair that thought was.<\/p>\n
I had done nothing wrong by loving my husband.<\/p>\n
I had done nothing wrong by believing him.<\/p>\n
His choices were not proof that my trust had been stupid.<\/p>\n
They were proof that he had failed to protect it.<\/p>\n
I walked to the couch and sat in the chair opposite him.<\/p>\n
Ryan leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees.<\/p>\n
"I know you don't believe me when I say I never wanted to hurt you."<\/p>\n
I looked at him.<\/p>\n
"I believe you didn't want to deal with hurting me."<\/p>\n
He flinched.<\/p>\n
I had not planned to say it that way.<\/p>\n
But once the words were out, I knew they were true.<\/p>\n
He had avoided the conversation.<\/p>\n
He had delayed answering questions.<\/p>\n
He had kept asking for more time.<\/p>\n
Perhaps he hadn't wanted to hurt me.<\/p>\n
Perhaps he had told himself that keeping quiet was kinder than telling the truth.<\/p>\n
But the result was the same.<\/p>\n
He had allowed me to keep believing in a marriage that he knew was in trouble.<\/p>\n
"I thought I could fix it," he said.<\/p>\n
I stared at him.<\/p>\n
"Fix what?"<\/p>\n
He looked down at his hands.<\/p>\n
"What happened with Simone."<\/p>\n
I felt my stomach tighten.<\/p>\n
He was talking about their relationship as though it were a broken object he could repair before bringing it home.<\/p>\n
"Did you end things with her?"<\/p>\n
Ryan didn't answer immediately.<\/p>\n
I waited.<\/p>\n
"I need to speak with her."<\/p>\n
I sat very still.<\/p>\n
The room seemed to grow quieter around us.<\/p>\n
"You need to speak with her?"<\/p>\n
He nodded.<\/p>\n
"I can't just leave everything like this."<\/p>\n
I looked at him.<\/p>\n
I had spent the entire day trying to understand what had happened between us.<\/p>\n
He had spent the same day telling me he needed time.<\/p>\n
Now, after admitting that he had been involved with another woman for weeks, he was telling me he needed another conversation with her.<\/p>\n
I didn't know what to say.<\/p>\n
Part of me wanted to demand that he call Simone immediately and end the relationship.<\/p>\n
Another part wanted to know whether he had already ended it before coming home.<\/p>\n
I was beginning to understand how many questions I had.<\/p>\n
I was also beginning to understand that I couldn't force him to answer all of them at once.<\/p>\n
"Do whatever you think you need to do," I said.<\/p>\n
Ryan looked at me.<\/p>\n
"Claire, that's not what I want."<\/p>\n
"Then what do you want?"<\/p>\n
He opened his mouth.<\/p>\n
For a moment, I thought he might finally tell me.<\/p>\n
Instead, he said, "I want my family."<\/p>\n
I looked toward the hallway.<\/p>\n
The nursery door was closed.<\/p>\n
I could hear the faint sound of the monitor on the table beside me.<\/p>\n
His words should have comforted me.<\/p>\n
They didn't.<\/p>\n
He wanted his family.<\/p>\n
But he had already placed another woman inside the boundaries of our marriage.<\/p>\n
He wanted the life we had built.<\/p>\n
But he had not protected the trust that made that life possible.<\/p>\n
He wanted to come home.<\/p>\n
But I had no idea whether he wanted to be the husband I thought I was welcoming.<\/p>\n
"I don't know what that means anymore," I said.<\/p>\n
He looked at me for a long time.<\/p>\n
Then he leaned back.<\/p>\n
Neither of us spoke for several minutes.<\/p>\n
I remembered the first apartment we had shared.<\/p>\n
We had owned very little.<\/p>\n
Our furniture didn't match, and we had eaten dinner at a small table that wobbled whenever either of us leaned on it.<\/p>\n
We had laughed about those things.<\/p>\n
We had promised each other that one day we would have a home where we could raise children.<\/p>\n
We had talked about the kind of parents we wanted to be.<\/p>\n
I remembered how certain we had sounded.<\/p>\n
I wondered whether he remembered those conversations too.<\/p>\n
I wanted to ask him.<\/p>\n
But I was afraid his answer would be another reminder that the past could mean something different to two people.<\/p>\n
That night, we slept in the same house but didn't share the same bed.<\/p>\n
I stayed in the bedroom with the girls' monitor beside me.<\/p>\n
Ryan slept in the guest room.<\/p>\n
We had never used that room for anything more than storing boxes and the occasional overnight guest.<\/p>\n
I had cleaned it before he returned because I thought he might need somewhere quiet to unpack.<\/p>\n
I had not imagined that he would be sleeping there because I couldn't bear to have him beside me.<\/p>\n
Before turning off the light, I looked at the empty side of the bed.<\/p>\n
I had spent months imagining Ryan returning to it.<\/p>\n
Now the empty space felt like something I needed.<\/p>\n
I didn't want to hear him moving in his sleep.<\/p>\n
I didn't want to feel his hand reach for mine.<\/p>\n
I didn't want to wake in the dark and briefly forget what had happened.<\/p>\n
I wanted one night in which my body could rest without being reminded that my life had changed.<\/p>\n
The girls woke twice.<\/p>\n
I fed them, changed them, and settled them again.<\/p>\n
Each time, I returned to bed and looked at the ceiling.<\/p>\n
I thought about Simone.<\/p>\n
I thought about the weeks Ryan had mentioned.<\/p>\n
I thought about the phone calls I had waited for.<\/p>\n
There were details I could never recover.<\/p>\n
I didn't know what he had told her about me.<\/p>\n
I didn't know whether he had complained about our marriage.<\/p>\n
I didn't know whether she believed he was going to leave.<\/p>\n
I didn't know whether their relationship had begun before or after the girls were born.<\/p>\n
Ryan had given me a few facts.<\/p>\n
My mind was filling the empty spaces with possibilities.<\/p>\n
I knew that could become dangerous.<\/p>\n
I could spend weeks imagining things that had never happened.<\/p>\n
I could turn uncertainty into certainty simply because I was afraid of what I might discover.<\/p>\n
So I made myself return to what I knew.<\/p>\n
He had kissed Simone.<\/p>\n
He had been involved with her for several weeks.<\/p>\n
She knew he was married and knew about our daughters.<\/p>\n
He had not told me about the relationship.<\/p>\n
Those facts were enough to hurt me.<\/p>\n
I didn't need to invent anything else.<\/p>\n
When morning came, I felt as though I had barely slept.<\/p>\n
I washed my face, changed my clothes, and went to check on the girls.<\/p>\n
They were both awake.<\/p>\n
Ava kicked her feet beneath the blanket while Mia stared at the ceiling.<\/p>\n
I stood between their cribs and watched them for a moment.<\/p>\n
Then I made a quiet promise to myself.<\/p>\n
Whatever happened between Ryan and me, I would not make decisions based on what I feared he might have done.<\/p>\n
I would make them based on what he had actually done and what he chose to do next.<\/p>\n
It wasn't forgiveness.<\/p>\n
It wasn't a decision to leave.<\/p>\n
It was simply the first thing I had felt certain about since the harbor.<\/p>\n
The rest of that afternoon passed in small pieces. A bottle needed warming. Mia needed changing. Ava cried because she was tired, then cried again when I tried to put … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39489,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insightdrama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39495"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39495\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39515,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39495\/revisions\/39515"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/39489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}