"I am asking you to believe me," Marco said quietly. "Even if I cannot tell you everything yet."
Elena laughed once, a short sound without humor. She picked up a towel from the basket and folded it with sharp, precise creases. Then another. The motion steadied her hands while her mind raced through possibilities she hated herself for inventing—late nights, soft excuses, the particular way Marco had been tired lately, the phone calls he stepped into the garage to take. She had told herself he was stressed about work. She had told herself marriage meant assuming the best until the worst arrived wearing perfume.
"Who is she?" Elena asked.
Marco's jaw tightened. "Someone from before. Someone complicated."
"Before what? Before me? Before Sofia? Before you decided secrets were a kind of kindness?"
"Before I knew how much it would hurt to keep them," he said.
Elena set the folded towels in a stack and pressed her palms flat against them. The rain continued its patient work against the townhouse. Upstairs, water ran in the bathroom sink—Sofia washing her wrists as instructed, singing something tuneless and happy. The sound of their daughter's joy made the silence downstairs feel crueler.