One evening in 1998, after the children had moved out, I finally snapped.
“Richard, do you have another woman?” I asked, my voice shaking as we sat
at the kitchen table.
The spoon dropped from his hand into his bowl of soup with a loud clatter. His face went pale.
“Don’t ever say that again, Eleanor,” he whispered, eyes wide with something closer to terror than anger.
“Then tell me what you’re hiding!”
He stood up slowly, hands trembling. For the first time in thirty years of marriage, I saw tears in my husband’s eyes.
“I hide it to protect you,” he said, his voice cracking. “I’m doing this to protect you.”
That sentence stayed with me for years.
—
The breaking point came on a cold October morning in 2004.
I had suffered through another sleepless night. The curiosity had become unbearable. For weeks, I had been waking up minutes before 4 a.m., pretending to sleep as he slipped away. That particular morning, I waited exactly ten minutes after the lock clicked, then crept downstairs in
