“I don’t know that he meets the criteria,” I said. Rose Hill was for the profoundly disabled, so far as I knew, and John could walk and do some of the tasks of daily living. “My girls and I can take care of him, anyway.”

“You’re good people, Barb.”

“Thank you. You too.”

“Okay if I visit with the old man?”

“Absolutely. He’s in the living room, sleeping in the recliner.”

She popped the last cookie in her mouth, waggled her impressive eyebrows and left the room.

It was strange, how many people had come to visit John. Caro’s Ted came fairly often, even though the men had never been particularly close outside of our couple nights. Noah brought his baby over at least once a week, and seeing John hold sweet little Marcus made me happy and brokenhearted and angry. If Sadie ever had a baby, would John know it was hers? Would it break Sadie’s heart, knowing her father could never be the type of grandfather who’d give piggyback rides and read stories? Not that he’d done that with Sloane or Brianna, mind you. Always with one foot out of the room, John.

Juliet and Oliver came, too, often bringing the girls. And Sadie was here every day. She was so devoted. Had it been me in that recliner, I wondered if she would’ve moved back.

Well. Apparently John had a way with people. Just not with me. Our window had closed long before his stroke, and maybe long before I decided to divorce him.

It takes two to make a good marriage, and only one to ruin it. But in the past several weeks, I’d been spending a lot of time awake at night, thinking about my role as a wife. I had stopped making John a priority a long time ago. When Juliet came into this world, she had outshone everything, and I resented his half attention to her, the way he didn’t seem to adore her as much as I did. He became superfluous to our life. If I hadn’t had Sadie, I wondered if we might have divorced years ago.

I had tried, yes. Those dance classes (ugh), the forced conversations, the date nights, all that. But maybe it had been too little, too late. Maybe John had been waiting for me all those years when I gave him my half attention, my irritation, the unpleasant but honest feeling that he was in the way. I wanted to love him, and I’d thought I might again . . . but the truth was, I’d cast him in the role of inept and irritating husband long ago.

Not that it excused his affair, not at all. I’d been ready to divorce him; he’d gone the cheap and easy way of cheating.