“That’s because he wanted to get away from you.”

“You seem to think I was some shrew to him. Is that really the kind of person you think I am? You saw us together more than Margaret did when we first got married. Did it seem like I was nagging him, or pushing him, or . . . I don’t know, just being a bitch?”

Bridget pressed her lips tight. “No,” she reluctantly admitted. “I used to think you tried too hard for his attention and took too much from him.”

Sarah couldn’t believe she’d say that after all the hostility. “I wanted to make him happy. I wanted to keep the peace. I wanted us to be partners and connect like we did when we first met and got married. He swept me off my feet. I wanted to know where that Sean had gone. So yeah, after a while, I stopped taking it. I stopped pretending that he didn’t really mean the awful things he said to me or the way he at other times ignored me. I thought things would get better. But they didn’t. It got worse.”

Bridget stared off into the distance. “You snipe at each other because of frustrations and resentments. You think, He knows I don’t really mean it. I don’t think he really means it. But it adds up and builds until you look at him and he looks at you and you’ve turned into someone you don’t want to be and neither of you knows how to fix it.”

Sarah reached across the table and put her hand over Bridget’s, feeling all the wild emotions she saw in Bridget’s eyes. Anger. Regret. Guilt. Confusion. “And it all falls apart.”

Bridget nodded, slipped her hand free, and crossed her arms over her chest. “At first, I believed all the things Sean said about you. I hated you for treating him so badly and making him unhappy. The more I sympathized, the more he poured it on, until . . .”

“You couldn’t believe I was actually that awful?”

“You were always so kind and even-tempered. You were always nice to me. You always seemed interested in our life. I remember the way you were with Sophia. You lit up around her. You talked to her like she was a mini-adult and played with her like you relished the opportunity to be a child, too.”

“I never really had a childhood.”

“I know. So I wondered why you’d sabotage your relationship with Sean when it always seemed like you wanted to please him. It didn’t make sense. I thought maybe you’d found someone else and Sean was too prideful to admit it. But then he’d talk about the things he was doing, trips he’d taken. He’d slip and say we did this or that.”

“And you knew I wasn’t the other half of that ‘we.’”

“I didn’t want to believe it. I never thought he was that guy. And you were pregnant with Jack . . .”