Page 38 of The Wife He Accused

"He told me he loved you more than he had ever loved another human being. He told me he loved you the way his father should have loved me, and the way I should have let his father love me. He told me that there was no next woman. That the part of him that was ever going to marry Vivienne Langleydied— that was his word — when he fell for you. He told me that if you decided to come back to him, he was going to spend the rest of his life being the husband you deserved from the beginning. And he told me that whether or not you came back, the marriage he had had with you was the only marriage he was ever going to have, and that there was no other version. There was you. There was going to be the rest of his life lived as the man who was married to you."

Catherine paused. She looked down at the driving gloves in her lap.

"He told me," Catherine continued, "that I would not be welcome in any room he was in. No calls. No intermediaries."

Melody, on the edge of the armchair, had stopped breathing.

Catherine finally looked up at her.

"I want to tell you something I have not told many people in my life, because I was not raised to tell people things. I love my son. I have loved him since the morning he was born, in a difficult labor I do not talk about, at a hospital in Connecticut, on a gray December morning. I have loved him through every version of him he has ever been. I have loved him so much, Melody, and so badly — because love can be donebadly,which is something my mother did not teach me and I did not teach him — that the loving became about protecting him from certain kinds of women, because I had been told, for the whole of my life, that certain kinds of women were the threat. I don’t think I understood until yesterday that I had been applying that category to you. I told myself, for the whole of your marriage, that I was simplylooking out for his interests.I told myself that the cool sentences at the dinner table were the appropriate work of a mother who loved her son. I told myself that on when I called you. I told myself that I was being a mother."

Her voice did the small thing again.

"I was not being a mother. My son is right. What I did was cruel. I’ve been cruel to the woman who makes my only son happy.Happy."

Melody's hand moved, involuntarily, to her throat. She did not speak.

"I have been a bad mother to him on this exact subject," Catherine said. "I have been a bad mother-in-law to you. I cannot fix this with a simple apology. I understand that. I am not here to be let off. I am not here to ask you to come back to him. I would not presume. That conversation is between the two of you, and I have forfeited any right to have an opinion about it."

Catherine stood up.

"I want to say one last thing, and then I am going to go. I have taken up enough of your afternoon."

"All right."

"My son loves you in a way I have not seen a man in this family love a woman since — I am not sure I have seen it at all. I think my father may have loved my mother that way, for a while, before I was old enough to know what I was looking at. I think it may have skipped a generation. I want to tell you that the way he loves you is not the question in front of you. I don’t want you to think that I am here to tell you that he was always going to come around. I am here to tell you that he has come around — that I watched it happen in my own morning room yesterday. The man who walked out of my house is a man I have not met before, and he is the man you are now going to have to decide whether or not you want. He is a different man than the one you left. That is the fact I am giving you. I am not asking you to do anything with it."

Catherine took a breath.

"You make him happy. I did not understand how much until now. I’m sorry I did not see it sooner. I’m sorry I made it harder for him to show me by being the kind of mother who had to beshown.I’m — I am so sorry, Melody. I am so sorry."

Catherine closed her eyes and then composed herself. She picked up the driving gloves she had set down on the couch.

"Thank you for letting me in. If you decide to write to me, or to call me, or to have a conversation with me at some future point, I’ll be available, and I will listen, and I will not be the woman I’ve … been."

She walked to the door of the apartment. Melody did not get up; she was unable to. She did not trust her legs. Catherine paused at the door.

"Melody."

"Yes?”

“He’s at the apartment tonight. In case that matters."

The door closed behind her.

Melody sat on the edge of the armchair for a long time. When she finally moved, it was to reach for her phone.

CHAPTER 14

MELODY

It was almostnine when Melody got out of the cab on Park.

She hadn’t told Angelica what she was going to do. She had only told her she was going, and Angelica had looked at her from the far end of the couch and said,tonight?and Melody had said,tonight.Angelica had nodded once and said,take a cab, text me when you get there, text me when you leave,and Melody had put on her coat and walked out.

The doorman saw her before she got to the door. "Mrs. Winters."

"Hello, Hector."