“I still love you.”

I had waited to hear those words for months.

Now they arrived as though they were a final argument in a business negotiation.

“I don’t know what love means to you anymore,” I said.

“You let me believe there was something wrong with me.

You slept downstairs because you were making calls to another family.

You let your mother belittle me while the two of you talked about borrowing against my property.”

“It wasn’t supposed to go this far.”