“Do you think things could have been different for us?” I ask.

“What do you mean?”

“Like if the trial turned out differently. If they found the real killer. Would we have had a chance?” I try to contain the desperation in even asking the question.

“I’d like to think so.” Her eyes lock with mine as she tilts her head and begins batting her eyes, it almost seems… forced. Like she’s saying what I want to hear, but why? I really don’t know, but that’s the one thing about Sarah, she’s always thinking, calculating. There’s never not an ulterior motive, another angle to the play. She’s always in control… of everything.

“I’d like to think so too. I think we’d have been happy. I think we’d have finally started a family of our own.” There’s hope in my eyes, but there’s none in hers.

She smiles and squeezes my hand for the seventh time. “Do you regret what you did?”

“What do you mean?” My head perks back up from the table as my eyes squint to brace from the angle of this question. I have all types of regrets. Which one is she trying to pull out of me?

“Sleeping with Kelly? Cheating on me? Giving up on us?” Her eyes narrow and she leans further away from me.

Ahh, those regrets. “I never gave up on us,” I say, and I mean it. “I may have been unfaithful, but I never gave up on us. I love you. Always have and always will, not that that is for much longer.”

She just stares back at me with a thousand-yard stare. I know she heard what I said, but it’s not registering. She seems to be looking through me, to the wall behind my head as if I’m not really here. Or maybe it’s her that isn’t really here, and this is merely a phantom proxy of her. A projection of the person I wished would show up today of all days. She squeezes my hand an eighth time.

“I’m sorry for not being a better wife to you.”