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“It doesn’t,” he said. “I’m surprised you don’t trust me.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“What do you need? I can get it for you.” He watched her carefully as he drank.
She set her cup down on the table. “I want to get a complete list of our investment portfolio — every property, every account… All of it.”
“I gave you that.”
“It doesn’t seem right to me. I’m sorry if it sounds suspicious, but I suppose after everything that’s happened, it is hard for me to trust you.”
“I wouldn’t do anything like that, and you know it.” His eyes sparked. “I still love you. I care about what happens to you. I’m going to make sure you’re taken care of.”
“You do?”
“What?”
“Still love me.”
“Of course I do. None of this was my… Ugh.” He grunted. “Anyway, what I’m saying is… You can trust me. I’ll do right by you.”
“I’m glad to hear it.” Could she? Could she trust the man who’d secretly had an affair and announced his intention to end their marriage on the evening of their vow renewal? “Were you about to say none of this was your idea?”
He shrugged. “What does it matter now?”
“It matters to me. Whose idea was it?”
He ran a hand over his hair. “I have a son.”
“Two, actually. I know.”
“I can’t abandon him.”
“I get that. What I’m wondering is why did you do it in the first place? Why did you feel the need to fall into someone else’s arms?”
He met her gaze for the first time, his brown eyes full of pain. “We lost touch with each other. I’m not justifying it, but that’s what happened. I was on a work trip, I was lonely and disconnected from you. You were so busy with the kids, so occupied with them and what was going on in their lives, it was hard for me to get your attention.”
“That was my job. I’m a mother.” A sob caught in her throat. Finally they were having a real discussion about what’d gone wrong in their relationship, and it had loosened the ball of emotions wound tight in her gut.
“I know that. I’m sorry… What more can I say?”
“I’m sorry too.”
“For what?” he asked, brow furrowed.
“For leaving you alone in our marriage. For not being someone you felt you could talk openly to about what was missing.”
“I didn’t want to burden you. You’re an amazing wife and mother. It was my problem, not yours.”
“We were in it together.” She shrugged, wiping a tear from her eye. “I’m regretful for my part in it.”
“Thank you,” he said. “I often wonder if I was too hasty.”
She frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Maybe I shouldn’t have ended things with you the way that I did. Geri and I could’ve raised our son together while you and I stayed married. But I didn’t think you’d want that. I thought for certain that as soon as you discovered his existence, you’d leave me.”
She studied the lines of his face. So familiar to her and yet sometimes he seemed a stranger. “I don’t know what I’d have done.”
