We told each other everything. We were like two people assembling jigsaws of ourselves. Then one day, after I’d cooked a meal (I could do that now), Helen said, “Do you know what today is?” I thought about saying something flip and then thought about not saying it. “Today is my tenth wedding anniversary,” she said.

I nearly dropped the pan I was holding. I thought we knew everything about each other.

“You were married?” I asked as casually as I could.

“Still am, I guess,” she said. “I never got around to signing a piece of paper. Not that it matters. I’m never going to see the bastard again.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked. I don’t think I’d ever cared about a woman enough to ask her if she wanted to talk about it before.

“No,” she said. “Yes.”

We sat down. I got us two beers, and she told me everything. It was a hell of a story.

Of course, if you’re reading this, and you know who I am, you know the story, so I’ll confine myself to the basics. The woman, who was young and naïve, a country girl in the big city who didn’t want to go back to the farm. The man, who was a bastard, and drank, and was violent. And the day she walked out on him, went straight to the hardware store and told the clerk that she wanted to buy a hacksaw to cut off her ring finger.

“Fuck,” said Todd. Behm looked at him curiously, but Todd didn’t elaborate.

Yeah, that story.

And when she’d told me the whole thing, she cried in my arms, and made me promise I would never, ever tell it to anyone else.

I promised. How could I hurt Helen? When she’d been hurt so much already.

After that, things were different. Helen was different. It was as if she’d revealed the most secret part of herself and without that secret part, she had nothing. She kept saying, “I wish I’d never told you.” And no matter how often I said that I’d never tell, no matter how much I crossed my heart or swore on my own life, she kept on saying it.

It drove me crazy, I guess. I stopped seeing her as this beautiful, damaged woman who had fallen in love with me, and started to view her as a kind of albatross, clinging around my neck and making us both miserable.

“I wish I’d never told you.”

I wished the same thing too.

I suppose that’s why I started cheating on her. I couldn’t stand the reproach. I mean, I’d done nothing, right? I’d been faithful to my promise and told nobody Helen’s story. But all I was getting in return was misery. Dark looks. Sideways glances.