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I shook my head and tried to breathe.
“George, though, said he always believed you’d make a cuckold of your husband. He thought you probably had lots of affairs while you were married.”
“Did he?” I said. “He tell you this?”
“Yeah. He told anyone who’d listen.”
“Speaking from experience, no doubt,” I muttered.
“Did you?” she asked.
I closed my eyes. This had been a mistake. You couldn’t go back. The past was the past, and sometimes, it was too thorny to navigate safely.
I sat in April’s lounge as she fed Kimberly, and Harrison ran past yelling, and I realised she was no longer a friend. She’d picked a side.
She’d picked her side the moment I left Sean. And time and space could not change that. I envied Sean her loyalty.
I grieved again the loss of a friendship.
I could feel April watching me. I didn’t answer her. I couldn’t speak.
“Just tell me,” she said. “Help me to understand. Why did you leave him?”
“You still don’t know?” I asked.
He’d moved on. I’d moved on. But April hadn’t.
It devastated me.
“It was so sudden,” she said. “No one saw it coming. You two were so good together.”
No, we weren’t.
“It was such a shock.Sucha shock,” she repeated. “Just help me to understand.”
I realised then that heartache was not only the purview of those involved in the breakup. April had grieved our broken marriage, too.
I carefully put my coffee cup down on the table before me.
It was time to leave.
“Tell me,” she pleaded.
I looked at her. She looked back at me.
“If I had stayed,” I said softly, “I would not have survived.”
There was no doubt about that for me.
“I was dying slowly every single day,” I told her. “And he couldn’t save me.”
“You didn’t give him a chance,” April accused.
“April,” I said. “He was the one killing me.”
