The rest of that afternoon passed in small pieces.
A bottle needed warming.
Mia needed changing.
Ava cried because she was tired, then cried again when I tried to put her down.
The girls didn't understand that anything had changed.
They still needed the same things they had needed the day before.
That was a relief.
It was also exhausting.
Ryan offered to help several times.
I accepted some of his offers and declined others.
When he warmed a bottle, I checked the temperature before giving it to Mia.
When he changed Ava, I watched from the doorway.
I didn't mean to make him feel as though he couldn't care for his daughters.
I simply found myself paying attention to everything.
The way he held them.
The way he spoke to them.
The way he moved through the rooms he had been away from for months.
I was trying to recognize him.
I was also trying to understand how the man who had kissed Simone could be so gentle with our children.
At one point, Ryan carried Ava into the living room and sat with her on the couch.
She rested against his chest while he spoke softly to her.
He looked down at her tiny hands.
I stood near the kitchen entrance, holding Mia.
For a few seconds, I felt something close to happiness.
Then I remembered the harbor.
The feeling disappeared.
I hated that I couldn't enjoy watching my husband hold his daughter without thinking about another woman.
I hated that the kiss had entered every ordinary moment of our lives.
Even so, I knew the kiss wasn't the only problem.
The larger problem was the truth he had withheld.
If I had discovered something else about our marriage that morning, something he had hidden for weeks, I might have felt the same way.
I didn't know how to trust a person who could look me in the eye during a phone call and leave out something that important.
That evening, after the girls had been fed and settled, I returned to the living room.
Ryan was sitting on the couch.
The blue jacket lay folded over the armrest.
I stopped when I saw it.
He followed my gaze.
"I can put that away."
I shook my head.
"It doesn't matter."
But it did.
The jacket reminded me of the person I had been when I bought it.
I had been excited about his birthday.
I had wanted him to feel loved.
I had imagined him wearing it when we went out together, perhaps with the girls in their stroller.
I had bought it without questioning whether he deserved it.
Now I wondered whether that version of me had been foolish.
Then I realized how unfair that thought was.
I had done nothing wrong by loving my husband.
I had done nothing wrong by believing him.
His choices were not proof that my trust had been stupid.
They were proof that he had failed to protect it.
I walked to the couch and sat in the chair opposite him.
Ryan leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees.
"I know you don't believe me when I say I never wanted to hurt you."
I looked at him.
"I believe you didn't want to deal with hurting me."
He flinched.
I had not planned to say it that way.
But once the words were out, I knew they were true.
He had avoided the conversation.
He had delayed answering questions.
He had kept asking for more time.
Perhaps he hadn't wanted to hurt me.
Perhaps he had told himself that keeping quiet was kinder than telling the truth.
But the result was the same.
He had allowed me to keep believing in a marriage that he knew was in trouble.
"I thought I could fix it," he said.
I stared at him.
"Fix what?"
He looked down at his hands.
"What happened with Simone."
I felt my stomach tighten.
He was talking about their relationship as though it were a broken object he could repair before bringing it home.
"Did you end things with her?"
Ryan didn't answer immediately.
I waited.
"I need to speak with her."
I sat very still.
The room seemed to grow quieter around us.
"You need to speak with her?"
He nodded.
"I can't just leave everything like this."
I looked at him.
I had spent the entire day trying to understand what had happened between us.
He had spent the same day telling me he needed time.
Now, after admitting that he had been involved with another woman for weeks, he was telling me he needed another conversation with her.
I didn't know what to say.
Part of me wanted to demand that he call Simone immediately and end the relationship.
Another part wanted to know whether he had already ended it before coming home.
I was beginning to understand how many questions I had.
I was also beginning to understand that I couldn't force him to answer all of them at once.
"Do whatever you think you need to do," I said.
Ryan looked at me.
"Claire, that's not what I want."
"Then what do you want?"
He opened his mouth.
For a moment, I thought he might finally tell me.
Instead, he said, "I want my family."
I looked toward the hallway.
The nursery door was closed.
I could hear the faint sound of the monitor on the table beside me.
His words should have comforted me.
They didn't.
He wanted his family.
But he had already placed another woman inside the boundaries of our marriage.
He wanted the life we had built.
But he had not protected the trust that made that life possible.
He wanted to come home.
But I had no idea whether he wanted to be the husband I thought I was welcoming.
"I don't know what that means anymore," I said.
He looked at me for a long time.
Then he leaned back.
Neither of us spoke for several minutes.
I remembered the first apartment we had shared.
We had owned very little.
Our furniture didn't match, and we had eaten dinner at a small table that wobbled whenever either of us leaned on it.
We had laughed about those things.
We had promised each other that one day we would have a home where we could raise children.
We had talked about the kind of parents we wanted to be.
I remembered how certain we had sounded.
I wondered whether he remembered those conversations too.
I wanted to ask him.
But I was afraid his answer would be another reminder that the past could mean something different to two people.
That night, we slept in the same house but didn't share the same bed.
I stayed in the bedroom with the girls' monitor beside me.
Ryan slept in the guest room.
We had never used that room for anything more than storing boxes and the occasional overnight guest.
I had cleaned it before he returned because I thought he might need somewhere quiet to unpack.
I had not imagined that he would be sleeping there because I couldn't bear to have him beside me.
Before turning off the light, I looked at the empty side of the bed.
I had spent months imagining Ryan returning to it.
Now the empty space felt like something I needed.
I didn't want to hear him moving in his sleep.
I didn't want to feel his hand reach for mine.
I didn't want to wake in the dark and briefly forget what had happened.
I wanted one night in which my body could rest without being reminded that my life had changed.
The girls woke twice.
I fed them, changed them, and settled them again.
Each time, I returned to bed and looked at the ceiling.
I thought about Simone.
I thought about the weeks Ryan had mentioned.
I thought about the phone calls I had waited for.
There were details I could never recover.
I didn't know what he had told her about me.
I didn't know whether he had complained about our marriage.
I didn't know whether she believed he was going to leave.
I didn't know whether their relationship had begun before or after the girls were born.
Ryan had given me a few facts.
My mind was filling the empty spaces with possibilities.
I knew that could become dangerous.
I could spend weeks imagining things that had never happened.
I could turn uncertainty into certainty simply because I was afraid of what I might discover.
So I made myself return to what I knew.
He had kissed Simone.
He had been involved with her for several weeks.
She knew he was married and knew about our daughters.
He had not told me about the relationship.
Those facts were enough to hurt me.
I didn't need to invent anything else.
When morning came, I felt as though I had barely slept.
I washed my face, changed my clothes, and went to check on the girls.
They were both awake.
Ava kicked her feet beneath the blanket while Mia stared at the ceiling.
I stood between their cribs and watched them for a moment.
Then I made a quiet promise to myself.
Whatever happened between Ryan and me, I would not make decisions based on what I feared he might have done.
I would make them based on what he had actually done and what he chose to do next.
It wasn't forgiveness.
It wasn't a decision to leave.
It was simply the first thing I had felt certain about since the harbor.
Click here to continue reading: PART 7: When Ryan Asked Me to Remember the Good Years, I Wondered Whether He Was Trying to Save Our Marriage or Escape What He Had Done
I Thought Our First Family Reunion Would Be the Happiest Morning of My Life Until I Saw Who Was Waiting Beside My Husband
Part 6 of 20
