That was one of them.
I nodded once.
Nathan immediately heard what he had admitted.
“I mean—”
“I know what you mean.”
“It started during a difficult period between us.”
“What difficult period?”
“You were consumed with the pregnancy.”
I stared at him.
He continued because panic had made him careless.
“Everything became doctors and the nursery and what you could eat and whether you were tired.
I felt like there wasn’t any room for us anymore.”
I rested one hand on my stomach.
“You cheated because I was pregnant?”
“That’s not what I said.”
“It’s exactly what you said.”
Nathan pulled out a stool and sat for the first time.
His shoulders dropped.
“Please.
Can we not reduce seventeen years to one mistake?”
“One mistake happened thirty-two times at the same hotel.”
He flinched.
I had wondered during the previous forty-eight hours whether seeing him frightened would make me feel powerful.
It didn’t.
It made me tired.
The cruelest part of betrayal wasn’t discovering that Nathan had wanted someone else.
It was realizing how much daily effort he had invested in making me doubt what I noticed.
Every late dinner.
Every concerned instruction.
Every time he told me pregnancy was making me overthink.
He had not merely kept a secret.
He had managed me around it.
Nathan reached across the counter.
“Can we stop the filing?”
I moved my hand away before he touched it.
“No.”
“We haven’t even tried counseling.”
“You were still seeing her tonight.”
His eyes dropped.
“You didn’t stop because you regretted it,” I said.
“You stopped because somebody handed you papers.”
He said nothing.
The next morning, the campaign changed.
Nathan became helpful.
Coffee appeared beside me before I asked for it.
He offered to finish assembling the changing table.
He canceled two meetings and announced that he could work from home.
I recognized the strategy immediately.
He was trying to restore the old rhythm before anyone else could see the break.
When that didn’t work, he tried remorse.
Then explanation.
Then anger.
By the weekend, he was standing in the doorway of the nursery accusing me of trying to destroy our family.
“I am trying to protect what is left of it,” I said.
“By divorcing me weeks before our child is born?”
“You chose the timing, Nathan.
