She leaned against me.
“I don’t know what to do.”
“You don’t have to decide tonight.”
Emma wiped her eyes.
“Would you be angry if I stayed with him?”
The question hurt.
“No, sweetheart.”
“But you told me to break up with him.”
“I shouldn’t have demanded that before explaining anything. I was frightened, and I reacted badly.”
She looked at me.
“I thought you were going to tell me he’d done something dangerous.”
“No. I recognized someone connected to a painful part of my life. But you deserve to decide what his dishonesty means for yours.”
Emma was quiet.
Then she asked, “Did Dad ever apologize properly?”
I thought about my former husband.
He’d apologized many times during our separation. Sometimes sincerely, sometimes because he wanted to end an argument.
But he’d continued withholding information until I no longer knew which promises to believe.
“He apologized,” I said. “But I couldn’t rebuild trust while I was still discovering things he’d hidden.”
