Chapter 5: What Andrew Hadn't Said
I didn't go straight home.
I walked for almost an hour — through the park at the end of our street, past the shops that weren't open yet, along the long way around the neighborhood.
I needed the cold air and the movement and the space to think before I walked back through my own front door.
When I finally came in, Andrew was in the kitchen.
Two cups of coffee on the table.
He had been waiting.
I sat down and wrapped both hands around the cup.
"She admitted it," I said.
"All of it."
"How did she seem?"
"Ashamed.
Genuinely, I think." I looked at him.
"She said it started when she read my letter.
The one I wrote you before we were married.
She said reading it was when she understood how much I loved you, and that's when the feeling started."
Andrew was quiet for a moment.
"That's a strange thing to confess."
"It's a strange thing to do." I set the cup down.
"Andrew, I need to ask you something and I need you to answer me honestly."
"All right."
"Did you ever feel anything back?
Even a small thing.
Even once."
He didn't answer immediately.
He looked at the table, then back at me.
"No," he said.
"But I want to be honest with you about something else."
My stomach tightened.
"When the first letter came, I was — I won't say flattered, because that's not quite right.
But I wasn't completely unmoved by it either.
Not because of Eliza.
Because of what she wrote about you." He paused.
"She described you the way I think about you.
And reading that — someone else seeing you that clearly — it caught me off guard."
I stared at him.
"I should have told you the moment the first letter arrived," he said.
"I kept it because I didn't know what to do.
Then I kept the second one for the same reason.
And then there were six and I had waited too long and I didn't know how to start."
"You could have started with: *Eliza sent me a letter.*"
"Yes." He didn't argue.
"I could have.
I'm sorry."
The kitchen was quiet.
Outside, a car passed slowly down the street.
"Why did you bring out the box last night?" I asked.
"At the dinner.
In front of everyone."
"Because she flirted with me in front of our entire family and I was done pretending it wasn't happening." He looked at me steadily.
"I wanted her to know that I knew.
That I had always known.
And I wanted her to have to hold that in front of the people who love you."
"You wanted to shame her."
"I wanted her to feel the weight of what she'd been doing.
Yes."
I thought about Eliza's face when she saw the box.
The way the color had left her completely.
The way she had pressed it against her chest like she could make it disappear.
"She felt it," I said.
"I know."
I picked up my coffee again.
It had gone slightly cool.
I drank it anyway.
"I'm not angry at you," I said finally.
"But I need you to understand — if something like this ever happens again, you tell me immediately.
You don't protect me from it.
You don't wait.
You tell me."
"I understand."
"I mean it, Andrew."
"I know you do." He reached across the table and put his hand over mine.
"And I'm telling you now: there is nothing in this house, nothing in my phone, nothing in my life that I would be ashamed for you to see.
Not one thing."
I looked at his hand over mine.
I believed him.
That was the complicated part.
I was angry and I was hurt and I believed him completely, and all three of those things were true at the same time.
"I need to call our mother," I said.
Andrew looked up.
"Why?"
"Because she was at that dinner.
She saw Eliza's face when you brought out the box.
She's going to have questions, and I'd rather she hear it from me than piece it together on her own."
He nodded slowly.
"What are you going to tell her?"
I thought about that for a moment.
"The truth," I said.
"Enough of it."
I reached for my phone.
And then I stopped.
There was a new message on the screen.
It had come in while I was walking.
It was from Eliza's ex-husband, Marcus.
It said: *I think there's something else you should know.
May you like
Something I didn't give Andrew.
Can we talk?*
