I want to be honest about that, because stories like this often make it seem as though forgiveness is instantaneous, as though love sweeps everything away in a single beautiful moment.
It isn’t. It wasn’t.
I stood up and walked to the window, and I stared at the black sea for a very long time.
My husband did not follow. He did not plead. He stayed on his knees on the carpet, silent, letting me feel everything I needed to feel.
I was angry. I was furious. A year of my life had been a controlled experiment. He had watched me weep, watched me endure, and told himself it was necessary.
But another voice rose beneath the anger, quieter and firmer.
He was afraid.
I thought of the boy left at boarding school gates. I thought of the man in the hospital bed, flinched at by the woman he loved. I thought of a thousand lonely nights by a fire.
I had spent a year learning how deep his wounds went. I couldn’t unlearn it now.
At last I turned around.
“You were wrong to do it,” I said.
“I know.”
“You should have trusted me.”
“I know.”
