ADVERTISEMENT
She paused, long enough that I wondered if she had changed her mind about saying anything at all.
“I wasn’t going to say anything. Your husband asked me not to tell you. I chose not to honor that. I slipped it into his pocket when we hugged goodbye, so you’d find it. Then I lost my nerve,” she said finally.
She turned her head toward the window, watching a couple pass by outside with their hands loosely linked.
“Because Ron did do something wrong. Not recently. But once, a long time ago.”
“What are you saying?” I asked, sitting very still, my hands folded.
“I was the something,” she said quietly.
Allison’s words didn’t arrive all at once. They came slowly, like water seeping through a crack.
It had been 20 years ago.
Allison was in her 20s then. They met through a consulting project Ron had taken on outside his regular work. It lasted a few months, and he’d ended it himself.
“He ended it and told me not to contact him again. He said there were things in his marriage I wasn’t entitled to.”
“I didn’t know that,” Allison said. “If I had, I would have walked away sooner.”
I looked down at my cup; the coffee had cooled, untouched.
“So, this was not just about Serenity hiring you?”
“No,” she replied. “This is how I came back into his orbit, but it’s not why I am sitting here with you.”
“You sought me out, after all this time?”
“I did, Delilah,” she said. “Because I’m sick. I don’t have much time. That’s all you need to know.”
She folded her hands together, as if bracing herself.
“I came because the truth was already overdue,” she said. “I didn’t see Ron again after he ended it. I built my life. I became who I am. But when Serenity contacted me, it felt like a door reopening that I had never properly closed. That’s why I met Ron. I didn’t want the truth to be buried again.”
“Why tell me now?” I asked, studying her face.
“Because your husband never had the right to decide what you didn’t deserve to know,” she said.
Continue reading…
ADVERTISEMENT
