"I'll go."
The counselor's office was in a brick building in Littleton, a plant in the corner, a box of tissues placed with the cynicism of experience. Her name was Patricia. She did not look surprised by anything, which Rachel found both comforting and faintly insulting. They told the story in turns. Jason's version was the lights, the shout, the man, the cake, the letter. Rachel's version was the years of almost-saying and the way competence had replaced intimacy so gradually that she had started calling the replacement a personality. Patricia did not take sides in the first session, which made Jason angry and then, later, grateful. She gave them homework that sounded like an insult: for two weeks, no conversations about the affair after eight p.m., no using Sophie as a messenger, no contact with Andre that wasn't logistical and disclosed. "You are not ready to decide a marriage," she said. "You are ready to stop doing new damage while you shake. That is the job. It is smaller than you want and harder than it sounds."
Rachel abided. The abiding was a physical ache, a phantom limb where the secret had been. Andre emailed once, to her work address, subject line Workshop dates, body a single paragraph: I will not contact you again unless you tell me, through a channel Jason knows about, that you want a conversation. I am sorry for my part in a night a child will remember. I am not sorry I loved you. I need you not to answer this unless the answer is a real decision. She showed the email to Jason before she did anything. They sat with it at the island like a bill. Jason's jaw worked. "He said loved," he said. "Past tense. That's either respect or strategy."
"It's both," Rachel said. "He's not a villain. He's also not innocent. He knew I was married. I told him the marriage was hollow. He chose to believe the hollow part because it let him touch me. I chose to offer the hollow part because it let me be touched. You can hate us separately or together. I won't argue with the math."
"Don't answer him," Jason said.
"I wasn't going to."