“Oh, Byron,” she said. “I know I’m a terrible wife. Even to let it go that far. I know. I’ve really tried to be good to you, but I know I don’t do anything the way I should. I guess I’m just not made for it. I’m so—restless! I should have realized it sooner.”

“What are you saying?”

“I know you’ll never forgive what I’ve done. I can’t forgive myself.”

He sighed, and turned from her again. After a moment, he said, “I don’t understand why you thought where we lived would make any difference. Did you think I wasn’t happy with you?”

“I didn’t know. I thought I must have been doing something wrong, the way you were so distant.”

“Is this why you were asking me about the war? Because this guy told you about what had happened to him?”

“Yes. A little.”

A long minute passed in silence. Finally, he said, “Doll, there are things I’ve seen that I don’t want to think about. Or talk about. I just want to leave them behind me. Maybe you can’t understand that. Guys have different ways of dealing with things. I don’t know what this guy JJ told you, but for me, I don’t want to talk about it. I want to get on with our life.”

She sighed. It seemed hopeless that he would ever understand her position. “But those things are in you, Byron. How can I really love you if I don’t know half of what’s in you?”

He was watching the fingers of his right hand twist his wedding band round and round on his left hand’s ring finger. Dolly remembered how she had felt when she put that ring on his finger: ecstatic. Complete. “You always have. Loved me,” he said. “I know you’ve tried. I’m sorry I haven’t made you happy.”

She was quiet.

“I’ve tried to take care of you, Doll, like you do me—I don’t know what I’d do without you. That’s why I went into the business with Roy. I wanted to give us a better life—better than we ever would have had back in Battle Point with me working for my stepdad.”

“But you took me away from my family. My friends. You never even asked what I wanted.”

“I guess I didn’t know I was supposed to.” He laughed a little, ruefully.

“It never occurred to you to consider what I wanted?”