Caitlin. Can you believe that was her name? It’s like some kind of younger other-woman joke. In second-rate novels, they always have those girlish names like Tiffany or Anique or Caitlin. She was from a big Irish-Catholic family, like him. They didn’t seem to feel too much of that famous Catholic guilt once they began their affair, though—not enough to stop them, anyway. He met her in a pottery class he was taking—I used to love that he was always learning something new, usually something with his hands. He was a skilled potter, and he tried his hand at painting, though he didn’t like it much. Who knew he’d meet a twenty-eight-year-old earth mother in this second-level class and use those hands on her? At first I thought we could work it out—things had been rocky between us as Sarah grew up and became more independent, but we still laughed sometimes. We still made love. Sometimes it felt as though there was a wide, cold river between us, but I could still see him. It felt like one we could ford. And then he came home one night some weeks after his first confession and my tears and angry questions and his guilty, evasive replies. His hands were shaking, and his eyes were red-rimmed. He told me that he’d tried to stop, but Caitlin was the woman he was meant to be with, and he was sorry, but there was nothing he could do. She was everything he’d ever wanted.

“Didn’t that used to be me?” I asked.

“There’s always been this thing missing between us,” he said. “I couldn’t name it until now.”

“I can name it,” I said. “It’s called being a dumb kid with a great body who thinks you’re a god.”

“Don’t be like that,” he said. “You don’t even know her.”

But I was right. He packed his bags and moved out that night as I sat in front of a cold cup of coffee, not moving.

You can imagine what followed. In some ways the worst thing about it was living such a cliché. Well. Not really. The worst thing was how painful it was. But it was a cliché, one that left me alone in a big house in Cleveland Heights with a fourteen-year-old to finish raising. By sheer force of will I never even thought about a man, hands on me, a mouth kissing mine, someone to love, for the next four years. No time for that. No room for it.