Olivia laughed once, no humor in it. “We both did.”
“I’m not putting it all on you.”
“I know.” She looked at me again. “Don’t take it all either. That would be very you, and very annoying.”
The familiarity of that almost undid me.
I nodded.
She touched the rim of her glass with one finger. “Do you want to try? Counseling. Time at home. An actual schedule that doesn’t rely on both of us remembering we’re married every third Thursday.”
The decent answer would have been yes if yes had been true.
I had given too many half-truths already.
“No,” I said quietly.
Olivia went very still.
Not dramatic. Not a movie version of heartbreak. Just a woman receiving the blow and refusing to fall apart before she understood the shape of it.
“No,” she repeated.
“I’m sorry.”
Her mouth pressed together. She looked down at the counter, then past me toward the dark window above the sink. Outside, the yard was black glass.
“There’s someone else,” she said.
I closed my eyes for one second.
When I opened them, she was watching me.
“Yes.”
The air changed.
Tiny nudged my knee with the duck, confused by the tension, wanting someone to throw the thing and restore the laws of the house.
Olivia pulled one hand from the other and wrapped it around her glass. “How long?”
My answer mattered. Not because any number would save me. Because she deserved not to be managed.
“Not from the beginning,” I said. “Not when I took the job. Not before things were wrong between us.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“No.” I took the hit because she was right to give it. “A few months.”
She flinched.
Small. Involuntary.
Worse than shouting.
I forced myself to stay where I was. “I didn’t set out for it to happen.”
“That’s what everyone says.”
