There was a hidden reason.

There was a secret underneath that proposal, a secret so much larger and darker and more selfless than the small, mean thing my jealousy had conjured, that when I finally learned it, years later, in a hospital hallway, it would knock me to the floor.

Looking back now, it hurts more than I can say to realize how close my ugliest suspicion came to brushing up against a truth that was the exact moral opposite of what I feared.

I suspected a villain.