Cherry nodded.
“I felt like you were angry with me all the time,” Tom said.
“I was.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know, for... for suddenly having a life without me.” She pressed her lips together, crumbling. “You weren’t supposed to have awhole lifewithout me. We were supposed to be in this together.”
“I didn’t have a whole anything,” Tom said. “I didn’t even feel like a whole person.”
Cherry clenched her hands in her lap. She was trying not to cry like a little girl. She was crying like a little girl. “Tom, were you having an affair with Rachel?”
“I don’t know,” he said hollowly.
“How can you notknow?”
He shook his head. Like he didn’t know that either.
“Did you sleep with her?”
“Once,” he said. “After you told me you wanted a divorce.”
Cherry felt like she was dying. (Again.) (Before all this, she hadn’t known you could be so sad that your bones ached.)
“It was a mistake,” he said. “I’d been drinking.”
“Tom, you’ve beendrinking?”
“Now?No. Then... yeah. Sometimes. I’d had a few drinks the night you called... That was the first time we’d ever kissed, for what it’s worth.” He shook his head. “I don’t know what it’s worth.”
“So you’re not...”
“I’m not...?”
“Seeing Rachel,” Cherry said.
Tom made a face. “No.I wouldn’t have—Just, no. We haven’t even worked together since then.”
“Did you have to tell Ophelia?” Tom’s editor. Rachel’s boss.
He looked beaten. “I didn’t have to tell her. No.”
Cherry felt a new wave of humiliation and pain rush through her. She waited for it to pass. It didn’t. She crossed her arms on the table and laid her head down.
“I’m sorry,” Tom said somewhere over her head.
“Okay,” she said. “I hear you.”
“Cherry...”
“I hear you.” She waited for the pain to settle before she lifted up her head. She looked in his eyes. “Do you really want to come home?”
“Yes,” Tom said.
“I don’t understand why. You could start over.”
“You really think that sounds appealing to me?”
