It simply collided with something else.
Compassion.
Grief.
Confusion.
Jealousy that immediately made me feel ashamed.
A strange sorrow for a woman who had died years before I ever met Daniel.
I stared at Joanna on the screen.
Twenty-five.
Maybe younger.
Smiling at the man I would eventually marry.
She wasn’t an ex-wife.
She hadn’t left him.
He hadn’t left her.
Their relationship had simply stopped because her life did.
I turned toward Daniel.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
He looked down.
“I wanted to.”
“When?”
“When we started getting serious.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No.”
“When we got engaged?”
“I almost did.”
“Almost?”
He nodded.
“What about before our wedding?”
Silence.
“After?”
Another silence.
“When we had our first child?”
Nothing.
“Our second?”
His face crumpled.
“Phoebe—”
“Twenty-two years.”
“I know.”
“No, I don’t think you do.”
I stood.
“You sat at family dinners while your brothers made jokes I didn’t understand.”
“I should have stopped them.”
“You laughed.”
“I know.”
“You let me laugh too.”
His eyes filled.
“I know.”
I thought about the pendant.
Then something inside me twisted.
“You gave me her necklace.”
Daniel looked up sharply.
“No.”
I stared at him.
“I saw the photograph.”
“I know.”
“She was wearing it.”
“Yes.”
“Then don’t tell me it wasn’t hers.”
Daniel stood.
“It wasn’t hers first.”
I froze.
He looked toward his mother.
“My grandmother gave that pendant to me when I was seventeen.”
His mother nodded through tears.
“She told me to give it to the woman I wanted to spend my life with.”
My anger became strangely quiet.
Daniel continued.
“I gave it to Joanna when I proposed.”
“And after she died?”
“Her parents returned it.”
I looked down.
My fingers felt cold.
“Then you gave it to me.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Daniel’s voice cracked.
“Because I wanted to spend my life with you.”
I closed my eyes.
“You don’t get to make that beautiful.”
He went still.
“You don’t get to turn this into some romantic story about loving twice.”
“I’m not.”
“Yes, you are.”
“No.”
His voice became firmer.
“What I did was wrong.”
The room fell silent.
Daniel swallowed.
“I should have told you.”
I looked at him.
“I should have told you before we married.”
He continued.
“I should have stopped my brothers the first time they made that joke.”
