"He was kind to me," she said finally. "That's all. I was so tired and so sad, and he was kind to me, and for about three weeks in August I let myself be with someone who wasn't falling apart. I'm not going to tell you I didn't care about him. I did. I'm not going to tell you it was nothing. That would be a lie, and I am so tired of lying to you."
Eric looked at the burn mark on the table. He traced its edge with his thumb.
"And then I showed up," he said.
"And then you showed up." Her voice broke. "Forty days sober. You had the chip in your pocket, you showed it to me on Jenna's porch, and the flowers from the Circle K, and you'd lost so much weight, and you were shaking, and you said you'd been to a meeting every single day and you had a sponsor named Ray and you were going to fix it, you were going to be the man I married. And I believed you. I looked at you and I knew you meant it. I'd loved you since I was twenty-one, Eric. I never stopped. I went inside and called Daniel and told him I was going home. And he said, I understand, I hope he deserves you, and that was it. That was the last time I spoke to him for a year."
"And that night," Eric said.
"Yes. That night."
"So it could have been me."