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walked over and hugged me, a long, swaying, we’re going to get through this kind of embrace. He kissed me and looked into my eyes and assured me that we’d figure this out. It only now occurs to me how odd it is that his first priority after coming home from a few hours at the office on a Saturday was to shower.
    I wipe my nose with my sleeve and move to a spot toward the back of the house, where I’ve wanted to do some sort of pergola and train wisteria to grow around it. I stand there, trying to plan it out, but my mind starts wandering. What am I doing? Really, what kind of future is going to happen here next week, much less months from now? Let’s say I plant the goddamn wisteria. Will I even live here by the time it blooms? Will Owen? Is it even a possibility? Do I want it to be a possibility?
    We all know what people say about men who cheat—take them back and they’ll do it again. But Owen’s not a cheater. He’s Owen . I can’t connect the two, no matter how many times I replay the scene of him sitting in our family room—our family room, how ironic—last night breaking the news about his mistress.
    Mistress. What a stupid word, meant for daytime television and romance novels, not real life. Not my life.
    This is the problem: I don’t have an answer for anything that’s happened to me. I throw my pruning shears across the yard, as if that will help.
    And then I’m walking over to get them, and I hear a car crunching up the driveway. I stare for a minute, looking at his familiar silhouette in the driver’s seat of his Wagoneer and the white coat hung over the back of the passenger’s side. The front of his car—the headlights, the wide grille—looks like a face, sneering at me.
    Maybe I shouldn’t just stand here. My heart thumps. My shoulders ache.
    Part of me wants to run at him, claw at his clothes, and demand, with all of the anger that pulsates behind my eyes, that he explain to me how he could do this to me.
    We lock eyes, and so I stand there, angled toward him—there’s something about facing him head-on. Blue leaps up and jogs toward him, and it pinches at me. He’s done this to you, too, you know , I think, watching the way that she licks his chin when he kneels down to scratch her. The back of my throat burns. The aftertaste of the wine I’ve been drinking is suddenly too strong and too sweet.
    I’m not ready for this. I turn and go around back. Not a minute later, I hear him following behind me.
      
    “Daph?”
    I turn.
    Blue lumbers up the steps to me, tail wagging. Good girl.
    “We should talk.”
    I glare at him.
    “Can we please sit down? Just for a minute?” He twirls his car keys in his hands and then walks toward the old iron scrollwork bench left by the previous owners. I rest against the door, if only to keep myself from falling to the floor. I feel light-headed and it’s not from the wine. He sits and leans on his knees, still twirling his keys in his hands. I notice his simple gold wedding band that we picked out together at a jewelry store in Chapel Hill. He rocks back and forth on his heels. Who are you? I think.
    “I can’t imagine what this has done to you,” he says.
    “What you have done to me,” I correct him.
    He nods but doesn’t look at me. His voice is even. I can’t tell whether he’s angry or contrite, calm or nervous. I want so badly to hate him.
    “I know that it’s not what you want to hear, and I know that it sounds canned, but, Daphne, you have to believe me when I say that I didn’t want this to happen.”
    “I don’t have to believe anything.” My voice breaks. I can’t get out one sentence before my voice breaks. I swallow hard, as if I can force it down. “I don’t owe you anything.”
    “I know you don’t,” he says, under his breath. “Trust me—”
    “Please!” I interrupt. “ Trust you? I don’t even know who you are.”
    “I’m sorry. That was a stupid thing to say,” he says. “But I want to make this