“I know how it sounds.”
“Do you?”
He nodded.
“I thought every day would be the last day I had to pretend.”
“That tomorrow I’d get an offer.”
“And then I could tell you afterward.”
“Like it had been a temporary problem.”
I said:
“We were married.”
“I know.”
“No.”
“You knew legally.”
“You clearly didn’t understand what that meant.”
He flinched.
Good.
I was angry now.
“You decided alone that I couldn’t handle the truth.”
“I was trying to protect you.”
“No.”
My voice rose.
“You were protecting yourself from being seen struggling.”
He went quiet.
That was answer enough.
Adrian picked up the shoes.
“Come with me.”
I stared.
“Where?”
“There’s somewhere I need to show you.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Nora.”
“We are not doing a dramatic scavenger hunt through your secret unemployment.”
“I know.”
“But this matters.”
“What matters is that my husband lied to me every day for four months.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
He held the shoes.
“And if I only explain from here, I’m going to make it sound cleaner than it was.”
That stopped me.
Adrian was many things.
He was not usually good at admitting when a story made him look bad.
I grabbed my coat.
“Fine.”
“But if you reveal a second apartment, I’m taking the car.”
“There was no second apartment.”
“That was not reassuring.”
We drove through Briarhaven without speaking.
Fifteen minutes later, I recognized the neighborhood.
Older storefronts.
Narrow streets.
The public library where I used to study.
Then Willowmere Lane.
Our old building still stood.
The exterior had been painted cream.
The broken green awning was gone.
Someone had planted small trees along the sidewalk.
Adrian parked two blocks away.
“Why here?”
He picked up the shoes.
“Walk with me.”
We stopped beside an old transit shelter.
There were new advertisements on the glass.
New bench.
Same location.
Adrian sat.
I stayed standing.
“What?”
He placed the shoes beside him.
“This was my lunchroom.”
I stared.
“Your office was nowhere near here.”
“I wasn’t going to the office.”
Right.
Of course.
He looked toward the road.
“I spent a lot of afternoons here because it was close to the library and two bus routes.”
“You sat here?”
“Sometimes.”
“For hours?”
“Sometimes.”
“What did you eat?”
He looked away.
That was when I understood there were worse parts coming.
“Adrian.”
“Do you remember me telling you the company had started providing lunch?”
I did.
Immediately.
I had been thrilled.
One less expense.
I used to joke that corporate America had finally done something useful.
I stared at him.
“There was no company lunch.”
“No.”
“What did you eat?”
“Cheap things.”
“What things?”
“Peanut butter crackers.”
“Bananas.”
“Whatever was discounted.”
“Sometimes nothing.”
My chest tightened.
“Nothing?”
“We were trying to keep rent current.”
“We had my income.”
“Your tuition payments were due.”
“We could have changed those.”
“You had finals.”
“We could have changed them.”
He looked at me.
“I didn’t want your life to stop because I lost my job.”
