“I owe you an apology.”
I looked at her.
She didn’t sound rehearsed.
That surprised me.
“For what?”
“For last night.”
I waited.
She folded her hands tightly.
“I believed Daniel when he told me your marriage was falling apart because you cared more about work than family.”
I looked at her shaved reflection in the laptop screen.
“And that made what happened acceptable?”
“No.”
The answer came quickly.
“No, it didn’t.”
Something in my chest loosened by one small degree.
She continued.
“I thought you needed perspective. I thought you were humiliating him.”
“How?”
“By earning more. By traveling. By being…”
She stopped.
“Successful?”
Her face pinched.
“When you say it like that, it sounds ugly.”
“It sounded ugly when you believed it too.”
She nodded once.
To my surprise, she didn’t argue.
“I was raised differently.”
“So was I.”
She looked down.
“My husband made every financial decision in our marriage.”
