None of them made the secrecy painless.
When I returned downstairs, Andrew was still sitting at the table.
“I should have told you,” he said.
“Yes.”
“I thought I was protecting what we had.”
“You were protecting yourself from a conversation you didn’t want to have.”
He lowered his head.
“You’re right.”
I sat across from him.
“Did you ever love Claire?”
“Yes.”
“Do you still?”
He looked at me with genuine surprise.
“No.
That marriage ended a long time ago.
I feel sadness about what happened, and I regret the ways we hurt each other.
But I haven’t wanted to be with her since the divorce.”
“Then why did you hide her?”
“Because I didn’t want the worst mistake of my life to become the first thing you knew about me.”
I looked at him for a long moment.
“Andrew, your worst mistake isn’t the fact that you married someone who hurt you.
