Chapter 6: His Version
"Answer the question," I said.
Julian looked at the wall.
Then at his hands.
Then at me.
"Dana was someone I dated before you," he said.
"We were together for about two years.
It ended before I met you."
"How did it end?"
A pause.
"We wanted different things."
"That's not an answer."
He exhaled slowly.
"It got complicated near the end.
I wasn't — I wasn't handling things well at the time.
I wasn't the person I wanted to be."
"Were you seeing someone else while you were with her?"
The silence lasted four full seconds.
I counted.
"It was more complicated than that," he said.
"Julian."
"There was someone I was spending time with," he said.
"Toward the end.
When Dana and I were already falling apart.
I told myself it wasn't serious.
That it didn't count because things with Dana were already over in every way that mattered."
"But you hadn't told her that."
"No."
"So she found out."
"Yes."
I looked at him.
He was looking at the floor.
"And you didn't think," I said slowly, "when you were packing your bag last week to go on a trip with your friends — including a dinner with a woman you didn't mention — that any of this history was relevant information for me to have?"
"Nothing happened at that dinner."
"You keep saying that."
"Because it's true."
"And I keep telling you," I said, "that is not the part I'm questioning."
He stood up.
Moved to the window.
His reflection looked back at him from the dark glass.
"I've changed," he said.
"I'm not the person I was with Dana."
"The person you were with Dana left his wife alone with newborn twins and went on a trip he didn't fully disclose," I said.
"So help me understand exactly what has changed."
He turned from the window.
"That's not fair."
"Isn't it?"
"I didn't cheat on you, Nora."
"Not yet," I said.
And then I wished I hadn't, because it was cruel, and I didn't want to be cruel.
I wanted to be clear.
Those are different things.
He flinched.
"What does that mean?"
"It means I don't know what you're capable of when you're unhappy," I said.
"I didn't know about Dana.
I didn't know about the pattern.
I didn't know that when things get hard, your first instinct is to find somewhere easier to be."
He was very still.
"Who told you about Dana?" he asked again.
"Someone who thought I deserved to know."
"Who?"
"Her sister."
Something crossed his face.
Not guilt, exactly.
Recognition.
"Meg," he said quietly.
"I don't know her name."
"It's Meg." He sat back down.
"She never liked me.
She blamed me for what happened to Dana."
"Should she have?"
He didn't answer right away.
That was its own kind of answer.
"I hurt Dana," he said finally.
"I know that.
I've carried that.
But I was twenty-eight years old and I was a coward and I have spent years trying to be better than that."
"Then be better than that now," I said.
"Right now.
In this room.
Don't manage this conversation.
Don't give me the version that makes you look fixable.
Tell me the truth."
He looked at me for a long time.
"I went to that dinner," he said, "because I wanted to feel like myself again.
Not a provider.
Not a father.
Just — a person at a table having a normal evening.
And I knew, while I was sitting there, that I should have been home.
I knew it and I stayed anyway."
The room was very quiet.
"Thank you," I said.
He looked surprised.
"That's the first true thing," I said.
"That's what I needed."
He put his face in his hands.
And for the first time since he had walked through the door, I didn't feel like I was fighting him.
I felt like we were both finally standing in the same room, looking at the same wreckage, without either of us pretending it wasn't there.
My phone buzzed.
A new message from Meg: *Dana says she'll talk to you.
May you like
But there's something else you should know first.
Something he did that she never told anyone.*
