Lauren did not say anything at first.

She just sat there, on the couch, absorbing it, blow after blow, and the silence stretched out so long and so heavy that I could hear the clock in the hall.

I stood frozen in the doorway with the baby, not daring to move, watching a marriage hang in a balance I could not read.

And then, at last she spoke, and her voice shook with an anger I had never once heard from her in all the years I had known her — a low, trembling, furious grief.

She told him that he was a fool.