“I never wanted you to find out like this.”
Caleb turned.
That sentence nearly made him laugh.
“How did you want me to find out?”
She had no answer.
“Thursday? Next month? Next year?”
“I don’t know.”
“Were you ever going to tell me?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
Nia looked away.
Caleb nodded.
“Exactly.”
He suddenly remembered the flowers.
The coffee.
He walked back toward the foyer.
Nia followed.
Caleb picked up the roses.
“For you.”
Nia stared at them.
Her face crumpled.
“Caleb…”
“And your coffee.”
He placed the bouquet back down.
“Meeting gets canceled, and like an idiot, I think maybe this is good.”
“You are not an idiot.”
“Don’t.”
“I mean it.”
“You do not get to make me feel better right now.”
Nia nodded.
Caleb began pacing.
“Was it in this house?”
She didn’t answer.
Caleb stopped.
“That means yes.”
“Caleb, please don’t ask questions that are only going to hurt you.”
“You lost the right to decide what I get to know.”
Nia whispered, “Yes.”
Caleb looked toward the ceiling.
Their wedding photographs were upstairs.
Their bedroom was upstairs.
Every anniversary card he had kept was in a drawer beside their bed.
He suddenly felt like a stranger in his own home.
“How many times?”
“Caleb.”
“How many?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“Not many.”
“That’s not a number.”
Nia’s shoulders collapsed.
“Four.”
Caleb looked at her.
She corrected herself.
“Maybe five.”
He laughed bitterly.
“That changed fast.”
“I’m trying to be honest.”
“Now?”
Nia winced.
“Now you’re trying honesty?”
He walked away from her.
Nia followed.
“I know what I did was wrong.”
“Then why?”
“Because I was lonely.”
Caleb stopped.
There it was.
The explanation he had expected.
Maybe part of him had been waiting for it since he heard her say she felt invisible.
“I was lonely too.”
Nia shook her head.
“You were never here long enough to be lonely.”
Caleb stared at her.
“So that makes this okay?”
“No.”
“Then stop explaining it like it does.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I’m telling you how we got here.”
Caleb pointed toward the door Isaiah had just walked through.
“No. That is how you got there.”
His voice became quiet again.
“We got distant. We stopped talking. I worked too much. You were unhappy.”
He pressed a hand against his chest.
“That was our problem.”
Then he pointed toward the door.
“That was your decision.”
Nia looked down.