He sighed. “When I suggested that we should share war stories, I didn’t think of how ugly it would feel when it came to my turn. It’s something I’ve never talked much about except with a counselor, and only then because I needed to vent and put the ugliness behind me.”

“If it’s too difficult, you don’t have to talk about it.”

He sighed. “Not difficult, exactly. It’s more the unpleasantness of remembering and wondering where my head was at. Believe it or not, the day will come when you won’t think about your ex-husband anymore, and all the pain will be entirely gone. That’s where I am now. I’ve put it behind me.” He shrugged. “My wife played me, too. I wonder now if she even loved me on our wedding day. I was twenty-six, a young stockbroker when I married her. She was twenty and going for an associate’s degree. Wanted to become a legal secretary. She came from a broken family. Had an ornery, controlling stepfather who doled out money to her with conditions attached. Now, knowing how extravagant she could be with a credit card, I wonder if he was really all that bad. But she hated him, and I’ve wondered since then if I was only her ticket out. I made good money, even at that age.” He hunched his shoulders and then rotated them as if to work out kinks. “I think all of us wake up one morning in a marriage and realize the pizzazz is gone. That definitely happened with me, anyway. Our relationship wasn’t all that I’d hoped it would be, but I did care for her, so I settled. Looking back on it now, I can’t even say she went out of her way to deceive me into thinking she loved me. What she failed to do, I made up for with excuses, because once you draw back the draperies to examine reality, it’s too brutal and painful to face.”

Julie nodded. “I get it. I did the same thing. He’d put on those big shows of love and devotion as if they were plays that were scheduled for one evening a month, and sometimes I wanted to scream that I didn’t need grandiose gestures. What I needed was for my husband to cuddle with me on the sofa to watch a film or to turn to me during the night just to hold me close or to talk to me about his day. Only he didn’t need those things from me. He’d already gotten them from someone else.”

“It was basically the same for me. She got involved with a married man who was dragging his heels about getting a divorce. So she kept the home fires burning with me until she could make a smooth transition from one all-expenses-paid life to another. She redefined the word lazy, yet another fault of hers that I chose to overlook. The sofa was her throne, and television and books were her entertainment. I’d come home to a messy house and clean it up myself rather than quarrel with her. I honestly never saw the divorce coming. I won’t say I was the most fabulous husband that ever walked, but I did my best. She had free rein with my earnings. Spent unthinkable amounts of money on clothing and salons to look like a million bucks. I was thirty-five when she dropped the bomb on me. And it wasn’t enough for her to simply leave. She had to tear me apart before she walked out.”