She watched him struggle to say whatever it was, his expression contorting into a mask of pain, then fear. Eventually, Simon squeezed his eyes tight shut, then opened them wide and turned to face her directly. “I was seeing someone else—another woman. And I think Clare may have found out.” He broke completely on his last word, all his obvious guilt washing up and out of him. Eileen watched his confession pour out of him like a dam breaking. “I loved her, Eileen. Clare, I mean!” he added, obviously worrying that she may have thought he meant the other woman. “God, I loved her. Ever since the day I met her, from almost that first second, watching her up on that stage in that shitty little bar in Brooklyn. You have to believe me. I’m so sorry for what I did… I was just so fucking lonely all the time. But you have to believe me, I love Clare more than anything. More than everything.”

He continued to sob long after his words stopped, turning away from her, staring at the space between his feet. If the information had come from anyone other than Simon himself, she would never have believed it.

Eileen filled her lungs with the cool sea air, then let it out in a rush. She didn’t know what to say to him. Her thoughts were suddenly on a hundred different crisscrossing paths. Everything that had happened, her own current marital nightmare, the past, her sister, Simon’s confession—it was all so overwhelming she didn’t know if she was supposed to berate Simon or confide in him. The clearest thought she could grasp was this—Clare never loved you, Simon, not ever the way you thought or hoped she did. Which then led her to the realization that could both save Simon from his plague of guilt and possibly make him hurt so much more.

“Even if she had known, there isn’t any way that was the reason.”

Simon snapped his head sideways to look at her, his surprise obvious. He had been expecting Eileen, Clare’s sister, to rip him apart after admitting something so awful. “How do you know? Did you speak to her? Do you know something?” His desperate need for absolution was obvious.

“No, not recently.”

“Then how can you be so sure? I’ve been over it a thousand times in my head, trying to figure out if there was any way she might have found out. I just don’t see how it was possible. I was so careful.”

This did make her mad, but not for the reasons it should. “Oh, because that’s the most worrisome and important part? That there was no way you could have been stupid enough to get caught?” She was imagining her own husband now—a husband that was loved by his wife—a wife that was devastated by the betrayal.

“Eileen…no, I—”