I’ll be good, I told myself, all the way back to Southie. I’ll be good from now on.

But I already knew that I’d do it again.

The truth is, it’s not so hard to live a lie.

I greeted my husband with a kiss on the cheek. Jason returned the peck and inquired politely about my weekend.

“I feel much better now,” I told him honestly.

“I’m glad,” he said, and I understood, just by looking into his dark eyes, that he knew exactly what I had done. But I didn’t say another word, and neither did he. That is all part of how you live a lie—you don’t acknowledge it. You let it remain like an elephant, standing in the middle of the room.

I went upstairs. Unpacked my bag. Picked up my daughter and rocked with her tucked against my chest. And I discovered, whore or no whore, adulteress or not an adulteress, my daughter felt exactly the same, smelled exactly the same, loved me exactly the same, as I sat there, reading her Runaway Bunny and kissing her softly on top of the head.

I spent the next week dressing and undressing only when I was alone, as a form of courtesy. Jason spent the next week hunched over the computer until the odd hours of the morning, obviously avoiding me.

Sometime around the seventh or eighth night, once the bite marks had healed and I was still waking up to an empty bed, I decided this had gone on long enough. I loved Jason. I really did. And I believed he loved me. He really did. He was just never going to have sex with me. The irony of all ironies. The one man who finally showed me respect, compassion, and understanding was the one man who didn’t want my body at all. But love is still love, right? And according to The Beatles, isn’t that all we’ll ever need?

I put on my bathrobe and crept downstairs to ask my husband to come back to bed. I found him, as usual, hunched over the family computer.

I noticed that his cheeks were flushed, his eyes overbright. He had, spread out in front of him, all kinds of financial papers, including an online application for a credit card.

“Get the fuck out of here,” he told me sharply, and given his tone of voice, I did exactly as he asked.

Four hours later, we sat side by side at the kitchen bar, both eating bowls of cereal, Ree cooing away in the automatic swing, and neither of us saying a word.

He chewed. I chewed. Then he reached over and, very slowly, took my hand. We were okay again, just like that. Until the next time I had to disappear into a hotel room, I supposed. Until the next time he needed to disappear into the computer.