I sat with it, alone, and I did what betrayed people do, which is to construct reasons it might not mean what it obviously meant.

Maybe it was ending.

Maybe it was a mistake he regretted.

Maybe the man I had married, the one who split cheap coffee with me and meant it, was still in there somewhere under the tuxedos and the platinum watch, and if I was only patient enough, only good enough, only quiet enough, he would find his way back to himself.

That hope cost me months.

And it is important to me to say that it was not stupidity.