Two months after divorcing my wife, I found her sitting alone in a hospital hallway wearing a patient gown

“I know.”

“No, Ethan.

I mean angry in a way that scared me. I would lie awake thinking, how could he leave when I was about to tell him? How could he not notice? How could

 

he become a stranger in the same house?”

Each question pierced me.

“And then,” she continued, “I would remember the way you stood in the hallway after the second miscarriage, holding that tiny pair of yellow socks we bought, crying so quietly you thought I didn’t hear you.”

I couldn’t breathe.

“I heard you,” she said. “And I knew you were broken too. That made it harder to hate you.”

I covered my mouth with one hand, trying to steady myself.

“I never stopped loving you,” she said.

The words came so softly I almost thought I imagined them.

Then she closed her eyes.

“But I don’t know if love is enough to trust someone again.”

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