“Yes,” I said.
“You should have.”
He nodded.
Then he left.
His daughters followed after a few stunned seconds, though the older one paused near me.
“Brooke…
I didn’t know.”
I looked at her.
“You knew how she treated me.”
Her eyes dropped.
That distinction mattered.
She might not have known about the affair, but for years the family had treated Chloe’s cruelty like background noise because I was the only person expected to absorb it.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
This time I nodded.
It was not forgiveness.
Not yet.
But it was the first honest thing I had heard from her in a long time.
When the front door closed behind the sisters, only three of us remained beneath the chandelier.
Me.
My husband.
His stepmother.
And the six-foot photograph neither of them could talk around anymore.
Chloe picked up her handbag.
She had lost the smirk she wore in the image.
At the doorway, she looked back at Trevor.
For half a second I wondered whether he would go with her.
He didn’t.
She left alone.
Trevor and I stood in the wreckage of the dinner nobody had touched.
Twelve plates remained spotless.
Candle flames moved in the draft from the closing door.
His keys were still on the floor where he had dropped them.
“Did you ever love me?” he asked.
It was almost enough to make me angry.
Almost.
“That’s the question you have for me?”
He sat down.
“I made a mistake.”
“No.
You made choices.
Chloe made choices.
Then she made another choice when she sent me proof because she wanted me to know I had been replaced.”
He rubbed his forehead.
“She shouldn’t have sent it.”
There it was again.
Not: I shouldn’t have betrayed you.
She shouldn’t have sent it.
I closed the folder.
“That’s why this marriage is finished.
Even now, you think the disaster was getting caught.”
He looked toward the photograph and finally seemed unable to face it.
“What happens now?”
“My attorney contacts yours.”
“And the prenup?”
“The attorneys handle it.”
He looked suddenly younger than he had that morning in the kitchen, but sympathy did not change evidence.
