“Please…”
“And you were Noah’s father when he was born.”
The room went silent.
I stepped closer.
“I forgave you years ago, Daniel. But forgiveness is not the same thing as taking you back.”
He stared at me.
“So that’s it?”
“No.”
He looked confused.
“You can apologize to your children. You can try to know them, if they want that. You can spend the rest of your life becoming a better man.”
I paused.
“But you will not come back here as my husband.”
Daniel looked around the room one last time.
At the photographs.
At the business we had built.
At the children he had abandoned.
Then he slowly nodded.
I opened the front door.
Rain was still falling outside.
He stepped onto the porch, then turned toward me.
“I really did lose everything, didn’t I?”
I looked back at my children standing together behind me.
“No, Daniel,” I said quietly. “You walked away from it.”
Then I closed the door.