“Me too. Sometimes I wonder if I was more tolerant of jerks when I was younger, or if there are simply more jerks around now.” I sighed. “Or maybe I just attract them.”

Henry smiled kindly. “I don’t know about that.”

“I’m telling you, Henry, I can’t name one single person in my life—that I’m not related to—who supported me like I’d have supported a friend in my situation. And I trusted them. I thought they cared about me. I must be the world’s worst judge of character.” I shook my head. “Well, duh. Look who I married.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Henry said quietly, the logs on the fire snapping softly. “You see the good in people. That’s a nice quality.”

“I guess. I feel so stupid, though.” I set my mug on the end table and wrapped my arms around my knees. “Everyone knew Brett was cheating on me—even I knew it. But we all pretended we didn’t.”

“Why?”

“My so-called friends claim they didn’t want to upset me. And why did I pretend?” I felt my throat catch and hoped I wouldn’t embarrass myself by crying in front of Henry. I didn’t even know why I was telling him this stuff, but something about the warmth of the fire, the late hour, and the silent house seemed to invite confession. “I guess I was scared. I didn’t want him to leave me. I didn’t want to be single with two kids at thirty-seven. I didn’t want my kids to grow up in a broken home. So I pretended to be happy.”

“That had to be really hard.”

“It was.” I hesitated before asking the next question, but some gut instinct told me to ask it. Maybe he wanted to confess too. “Did you pretend to be happy?”

Henry stared into his cup without saying anything. For a second, I was scared my gut had been off and it was too personal a question for him to answer. He’d told me last night he was a private person, hadn’t he?

I backtracked. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry into—”

“I’m not good at pretending,” he said, interrupting me. “With me, what you see is what you get, and I won’t lie. Maybe that was my problem.”

I rested my chin on my knees. “How so?”

He tilted his coffee this way and that. “We couldn’t have kids, and she wouldn’t adopt. I wasn’t going to tell her that was okay with me. I was angry at her for that. I wanted a family. We argued, and I’m sure I said things I shouldn’t have.”

“I’m sorry.” I thought about telling him I understood because I’d faced infertility too, but decided against it. This wasn’t about me.

He shrugged. “There were other issues too.”