I held up my left hand.
My wedding ring caught the lobby lights.
“Twenty-eight years,” I said.
“Same house.
Same marriage.
She left that house this morning.”
Daniel slowly turned back toward her.
“You told me you were separated.”
Jennifer closed her eyes for a moment.
“We have been having problems.”
That was news to me.
Not that our marriage had been perfect.
No marriage survives twenty-eight years without disagreements, disappointments and seasons when two people become too busy to notice how far apart they are drifting.
But problems are not the same as separation.
And separation is not the same as telling an entire office that another man is your husband.
“When did we separate?” I asked.
“Robert—”
“No.
I’m genuinely curious.
Was it before breakfast this morning or sometime after you drove away?”
She looked down.
Daniel rubbed one hand over his mouth.
I saw the folder in his other hand and remembered what he had said when he entered.
Jennifer forgot some files in my car.
“How often are her things in your car?” I asked him.
Jennifer immediately said, “Don’t do this.”
I looked at her.
“I haven’t done anything yet.”
Daniel’s expression changed again.
This time there was anger in it, but it wasn’t directed at me.
“For months,” he said.
Jennifer stared at him.
“Daniel.”
He ignored her.
“She told me you two had been finished for a long time.
She said you still shared the house while you worked out what came next.”
I almost laughed.
Not because anything was funny.
Because the alternative was letting twenty-eight years collapse onto that marble floor all at once.
“We watched television together last night,” I said.
“She complained that I put too much pepper on dinner.”
Daniel’s face went pale again.
Jennifer stepped toward me.
“Robert, please.
Let me explain.”
I moved back before she could touch my arm.
“What exactly did you tell this company?”
She looked around the lobby.
Bill had gone very still behind the desk.
“People made assumptions.”
Bill’s eyebrows rose.
Even he knew that answer was weak.
I turned to him.
“Bill, did you make an assumption?”
He looked miserable about being involved, but he answered.
