I’ve thought about that night many times in the months since it happened: thought about faith and uncertainty; about love and jealousy; about what it means when you stop trusting someone you love, or when they stop trusting you. The bottom drops out; the center does not hold. Love is a mirage, an inkblot, subject to position, mood, interpretation. Relative, changeable, unstable, it can appear—or disappear—at any moment.

At least, that’s what I used to think.

The night I watched Donald turn away from me and go back into Adrienne’s house, I believed, with complete certainty, that I had seen the last of him; that the wedding was off; that he would never, ever come home. And who could have blamed him? What I’d done, how I’d behaved, was unforgivable. I had, without a doubt, destroyed us; sucked every last bit of joy and happiness and trust and love out of him. I had seen things that weren’t there; ignored things that were. I had driven him away. The Evil Twins had worked their evil magic, I had given in to my darkest fears, and, because I couldn’t help myself, the person most precious to me in the whole wide world was gone forever.

But Donald wasn’t like me; didn’t think like me; didn’t act like me. Love, to him, was not a mirage or an inkblot; it was not relative, changeable, unstable. Despite my abominably bad behavior, my terrible lack of trust in him, he came home two nights later, crawled into bed beside me, and fell asleep. And though he barely spoke to me over the course of the following week—barely said a word, spoke a sentence, unless it was absolutely essential (“Hi,” “Hello,” “Good night,” “I’ll see you later,” “I won’t be home for dinner”)—he stayed; did not abandon ship.

I don’t know why he did that.

I have no idea what he told himself to explain my behavior; what excuses he made to himself for deciding to stay with someone as crazy as me.

Maybe he’d chosen to look at what I’d done—my spying, my surveillance, my jumping to all the wrong conclusions—in a positive light; as evidence of my strong feelings for him, my fear of losing him, my not wanting to live without him.

Or maybe he’d simply chosen to accept what I’d done, my all-too-human foibles, and move on.

Whatever it was, I thanked my lucky stars for it.

And for him.

That first week passed slowly. Donald and Adrienne drove the dog out to an animal hospital in Germantown, and there, on a freezing night in late February, they had her put to sleep. Watching her slip into that faraway permanent slumber, they wept; consoled each other.