“Not the version you think I can handle.
Everything.”
Ryan pulled out a kitchen chair and sat down heavily.
He looked like a man who had been waiting for this moment and dreading it in equal measure.
“We met at the gym,” he said.
“Fourteen months ago.”
“Fourteen.”
“It started slow.
I told myself it wasn’t serious.” He looked up.
“I know how that sounds.”
“Keep going.”
“She lives twelve minutes from Toby’s school.
When I started working from home, she suggested she could help with pickup on days I had calls.
I said yes before I thought about what I was agreeing to.”
“You said yes,” I repeated.
“And then you texted me every Thursday at 3:15 to tell me you had done it yourself.”
He didn’t answer that.
“Ryan.” I leaned forward.
“Did you ever plan to tell me?”
He looked at the key still sitting on the counter between us.
“I don’t know,” he said quietly.
I straightened up.
Took a breath.
Looked at the dinner he had been making — pasta, the kind Toby liked, water already boiling on the stove — and felt something shift inside me.
Not grief yet.
Something colder and more focused than grief.
“You need to call her,” I said.
FULL STORY on the next page.
