“For fourteen months.” Her voice did not change. “That’s why I stayed, Stella. That’s the actual answer to the question everybody asks. I was twenty-four and I thought I was in an impossible situation with a man whose wife was dying and I thought I was being decent by waiting.

I thought I was the one making the sacrifice.”

“He told his whole office.”

“I know. I know he did, I found out after.” She turned her cup. “And do you know what I understood, when I found out he’d told forty other people the same thing?

That it wasn’t for me. I thought it was a lie he told me to keep me. It was a lie he told everyone because he needed to be somewhere, and the shape of the lie that worked on everyone at once was you dying.”

We sat there for a while.