You Had Five Minutes

But the audit, the board, the ruin.

I had the injunction ready and the shares in my name, and I could have used all of it or none of it, and in that car I had genuinely not yet decided which.

I was giving him the chance to decide for me.

Five minutes to demonstrate that somewhere under the affair and the cowardice there was a man who, confronted with a clear choice between his wife and his mistress, would finally choose his wife — not out of love, I no longer needed his love, but out of simple human decency.

That was the test.

He did not know he was taking it, which was itself the answer, but I gave it to him honestly.