“Who, that guy? What does Taylor Swift say? He can’t come to the phone?”
She giggles. “You truly are a different person. But no, I don’t think super slow is my preferred speed. What are you looking at?”
“The community classes at the Y. They seem…wholesome. I dunno. Just an idea.” I hand her my laptop. “You have a look, see what you think.”
She clicks on adult karate classes first, then the masters level swim club. “They have an information night next week, I think we could go to that. Let me check my calendar.”
She opens a new browser tab and types in a webmail address. But instead of it going to a login page, it opens an email account I haven’t looked at it in months.
That I had every intention of deleting.
Her face goes ashen. “Luke, what is this?”
“That’s nothing.” I want to throw up.
It’s the burner email address I used to communicate with Caitlyn. There’s nothing in the inbox, but she’s smarter than that. She clicks on the sent folder and finds the last email I wrote. “You emailed her the day after I found out about the affair.”
“And then I blocked her. You can see for yourself, she hasn’t replied to it.”
“You said just a few weeks ago that you had no more contact with her.”
“I, I had no more contact with her. I didn’t.”
“But you emailed her. Here I can see it in this email account that I'm looking at right now that you left logged in on your laptop.”
“That's not contact with her! I didn't speak to her.” My heart is pounding as I desperately try to fix this. “She called and left a message for me at work, the morning after you found out. When I went into the office, Cameron gave me a message that she had called my office, and that was unacceptable. So I sent her that email—that single email—and then I blocked her. She can't respond to that message and you can see, there is no response.”
“But you lied to me, Luke. I asked you if you had any contact.”
“I didn't have any contact with her.”
Grace jumps up. “You emailed her. And more to the point, you should have told me she called you. You don't get to keep secrets from me, even if you don't think they're secrets. I need you to be transparent with me on my terms, using the meaning of words as I understand them. Not your convenient-for-you definitions. I don't think we are at a place where you can be that callous or thoughtless about how I might feel.”
“That was months ago. I haven’t had any contact with her since that point. My phone is yours to look at, my computer is yours to prowl through. You’re mad at me right now about something I did in the past. That’s fine. But I’m not doing it now, so you’re mad at Past Luke, not Present Luke. I’ll do my best not to get defensive, but—”
She cuts me off. “But it’s not you who I’m mad at?”
“Exactly!” I stand, too. “Do you want to take a shot at me?”
“No.” She pauses. “No, I guess I don’t.”
“What can we do right now to reinforce what we have right now?”
She looks small and vulnerable and sad. “I don’t know.”
“Can we start with a hug?”
She paces away from me. “I need a minute. I just need to…” She lets out a rough breath and turns away from me.
I try not to panic, but it’s hard.
Then I hear her counting to ten, and my heart breaks. That was fucking stupid, an unforced error, and she’s right. I should have been more upfront about that bit of contact.
I tentatively move closer, and she sways, as if she wants to lean back against me.
And for what feels like the thousandth time, I whisper an apology to my wife.
29
Grace
The next week, we start couples counselling. Our therapist is someone Luke’s counsellor recommended. She begins by using his favourite word.
“When we talk about repairing a relationship after an affair, it’s important that we don’t focus on the affair itself at first. That’s an issue that isn’t going to be solved, per se, because there’s no changing the past. Repair is more about focusing on the future, and finding a softness, a peace in which you can move forward.”
I nod along. I agree with all of that in principle.
“So this means we need to be able to have moments, like what happened last week, and learn to just sit with them.”
“That stillness thing again,” Luke mutters to me.
I smile at him, then explain the reference to the therapist.
She nods. “Can you sit with that pain now? Can you look at it without having a big reaction?”
“Yes.” As long as I don’t need to do anything about it. Pretend it doesn’t exist.
She looks at me.
I stare right back. That’s all she’s getting. Yes, I can sit with it. I’m not giving her anything else to dig into right now. It’s Luke’s turn, and this is going to be hard enough as it is on him.
We both turn at the same time to give him our attention.
He’s coiled tight. “Yeah,” he says stiffly. “I can sit with it.”
“It’s okay,” I say quietly, almost under my breath. “I know it’s hard for you.”
His jaw flexes. “I’ll do whatever it takes.” He swallows. “I hate what I did. I hate why I did it. I don’t like to look at it.”
Panic rises inside me and I breathe deeply, trying to stay in the moment. Just sit with it. Just look at. Don’t react.
It’s harder than it fucking sounds, that’s for damn sure.
“Now I want you to both focus on this moment. And if I were to ask you to make a decision, a micro decision, what would your next move be? What would you do to shift yourself, in the smallest of ways, out of this pain.”
“I don’t understand,” I say. “I’m not ready to get over it.”
“I hear that. That’s okay. I’m talking about micro moves. Imagine there’s a string dangling in front of you, leading you out of this pain. Where does it go? If you take hold of it and take the tiniest of steps, what happens? Do you move towards Luke? Away from him?”
“Do I need to move?”
She purses her lips for a moment. “Can you tell me more about that?”
“I don’t know what I want to do.”
“You can choose to stay where you are. Are you holding the thread?”
I shrug. “Sure.”
Luke leans forward. “I’ll move towards Grace.”
She nods. “Okay. Then do that.”
I give her an alarmed look. “What?”
She smiles. “A micro move. Luke, shift your chair a centimetre towards Grace. No more. Just the tiniest of shifts.”
He nudges his chair infinitesimally closer to mine.
“And now let’s sit with this for a moment. Find that stillness.”
Even though Luke and I have an in-joke about sitting still being scary, this is genuinely intense for me in a way I didn’t see coming. Maybe because it’s not just the two of us. For all our problems, we are a unit, and we see each other in every way. This therapist is a stranger. A professional, sure, but a stranger all the same.