Kelly took two hesitant steps forward. “Talk to me like you used to. It doesn’t matter where you start.” She gave him a moment to compose himself as he sucked in huge breaths and ran a trembling hand through his thick, curly hair.

His voice came at an almost whisper. “I can’t stop it.”

Kelly’s thoughts hurtled to their usual self-destroying conclusion. Another woman. Or an addiction he’d swept under the carpet.

Daniel took a blubbering breath. “First it was the gift of cuff links—”

The confirmation of another woman didn’t bring a sense of closure. Instead it swept aside Kelly’s confidence in a jet of rejection.

“And then holding hands with Anna here on the deck—” Sobs stole the last of his sentence, and he paced the deck.

Something inside Kelly shattered. The work-wife. She should have known. She flicked through her memory for warning signs, but the attempt was swallowed by a rising anger. With him. With Anna. With herself for suspecting but doing nothing about it. But she had to let him talk. She had spent the last however many months wishing he would, and she couldn’t stop him now.

“And Howard’s legacy—” Daniel spun on his heel and all but collapsed on the railing.

Her husband’s gushing honesty both relieved and scared her. The locked-down control she leaned on was gone, but the door to his heart wasn’t really open; it merely swung wildly, clinging to exploded hinges. Why was he talking about Howard?

“But the one I don’t understand is your suitcase and that statement from Beyond Bank.”

Kelly froze. Daniel’s words hung on the ocean breeze that flitted across the deck as the secret she’d tried to hide for some time was breathed into life. Now it sat between them.

Daniel shook his head as if trying to regain control. “You probably think I’m crazy.” He looked down to her, in his eyes a sense of something foreign. Imploring. Like Milly looked whenever she argued for the sake of it but needed to know if it was safe to do so.

“I don’t think you’re crazy.” Kelly breathed deep, summoning courage. “And I can explain the bank statement.”

Daniel was a tableau of stillness. The only movement, his eyes.

Kelly gulped in another breath of courage. “Simon told me that if I want you to be honest with me, I need to be honest with you. I’ve been thinking about leaving you.”

Daniel’s shoulders slumped.

“The reason for the suitcase appearing in the photos is probably because I packed and unpacked it several times in my mind, but I only got as far as the front door.”

Daniel continued to sag, and for the first time in a long time, he seemed to be speechless.