Tony came home later than usual.
I heard his car pull into the driveway while I was folding laundry in the bedroom.
Normally, I would have gone downstairs to greet him.
That evening, I stayed where I was.
I heard the front door open.
His keys landed in the small bowl beside the entrance.
Then came his footsteps on the stairs.
He appeared in the bedroom doorway.
"Jen?"
I folded the shirt in my hands.
"Hi."
He looked at the laundry basket.
Then at me.
"Can we talk?"
I set the shirt down.
"Yes."
He sat on the edge of the bed, leaving a space between us.
For a while, neither of us spoke.
I could hear the washing machine finishing its cycle downstairs.
The ordinary sound made the silence feel even stranger.
Tony rubbed his hands together.
"I know today was difficult."
I waited.
"I shouldn't have handled it that way."
"Which part?"
He looked at me.
"All of it."
I wanted to accept the apology.
I wanted him to put his arms around me and tell me that there was a reasonable explanation.
But an apology without an answer felt like another door being closed.
"What is the truth, Tony?"
He lowered his eyes.
"I need a little time."
I stared at him.
"How much?"
He didn't answer immediately.
"Until Friday."
The words sounded almost rehearsed.
I stood so quickly that the laundry basket shifted against my knee.
"You're using her deadline now?"
"No. That's not what I meant."
"Then what did you mean?"
He stood, too.
"I mean I want to explain everything properly, and I need to get my thoughts together."
"You've had time to think about it before today."
His face tightened.
I knew he couldn't deny that.
I walked past him and went downstairs.
He followed me into the kitchen.
I took a glass from the cupboard and filled it with water.
My hands were steady now.
That surprised me.
"I don't know what Dakota told you," Tony said.
"She hasn't told me anything."
He looked startled.
"Nothing?"
"Nothing useful."
He sat at the kitchen table.
I remained beside the counter.
"She said you needed to tell me something yourself."
He pressed his fingers against his forehead.
"She's right about that."
The admission made me stop moving.
It was the first thing he had said all day that sounded honest.
I put the glass down.
"Then tell me."
He looked at me, and I saw the struggle in his face.
For one brief moment, I thought he would finally begin.
Instead, he looked toward the window.
The streetlights had come on outside.
Dakota's house was dark except for a small light near the front door.
Tony watched it.
I watched him watching it.
"Is this something that happened before she moved in?" I asked.
He turned back to me.
"Jennifer—"
"That's a yes or a no."
He swallowed.
"I can't answer that right now."
I stepped away from the counter.
"You can't answer a simple question?"
"I don't want to give you an incomplete answer."
I felt exhausted.
Not because we had been arguing for hours.
Because every time I asked for one clear fact, he gave me another reason to wait.
"I need to know whether I've been living with a lie."
He stood.
"You haven't been living with a lie."
I looked at him.
"Then why are you so afraid of telling me the truth?"
He didn't respond.
I went upstairs and changed into my pajamas.
Tony stayed downstairs for a while.
When he finally came to bed, he turned off the lamp without saying anything.
We lay facing opposite directions.
I didn't sleep much.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the note in his hand.
The next morning, Tony left for work without his usual goodbye kiss.
I watched him from the kitchen window.
He didn't look across the street.
Dakota didn't come outside.
There was no coffee.
No folded paper.
No conversation I could see.
The street seemed peaceful again.
That was the strange part.
Everything looked normal, but nothing felt normal.
I went through the day as best I could.
I cleaned the kitchen.
I watered the flowers beside our front steps.
I folded the remaining laundry and put it away.
Each task gave my hands something to do while my mind returned to the same question.
What could Tony have done that made him afraid of two sentences on a piece of paper?
I thought about asking Dakota again.
I didn't.
She had made it clear that she wanted Tony to speak first.
For reasons I couldn't yet understand, I decided to respect that.
That evening, Tony came home and tried to talk about work.
I listened.
I even asked him a question about something his colleague had apparently done.
For a few minutes, we sounded like ourselves.
Then he reached for his coffee mug.
The same mug I had washed the previous morning.
He held it in both hands.
"Jen, I love you."
I looked at him.
"I love you, too."
He seemed relieved to hear it.
But I wasn't sure what he wanted me to do with those words.
Love had never been the thing I doubted.
I doubted what he was keeping from me.
He set the mug down.
"I don't want you to think the worst."
"Then don't make me guess."
His shoulders dropped.
"I know."
I went to bed early.
He stayed downstairs.
I could hear the television through the floor, then the sound of it being switched off.
When he finally came into the bedroom, I pretended to be asleep.
I wasn't ready to comfort him.
Not when I was the one lying awake, trying to understand what had happened to our marriage between breakfast and the front door.
Click here to continue reading: PART 7: By Thursday, I Had Stopped Asking the Same Question, and My Husband Finally Understood That Silence Was No Longer Protecting Him
I Thought Our New Neighbor Was Simply Being Kind Until My Husband Read Something He Never Wanted Me to See
Part 6 of 8
