because I could tell she wasn’t going to finish unless I made it easier for her. She kept rubbing her thumb over the seam of her purse. I remember that more than I remember what the teller was saying behind us.

“At the party,” Trudy said. “Roy was kissing someone.”

I asked her to say it again. Not because I hadn’t heard. I just needed to know if she meant what I thought she meant.

“Who?” I asked.

“One of the guests. Candace, I think her name was. They were outside by the side porch.”

My mouth had gone dry, which sounds dramatic, but I had just taken a sip of coffee in the car and could still taste the burnt stuff. I asked if she and Wallace had both seen it.

“Yes,” she said. “We both saw them.”

She was careful after that. Maybe too careful. She said she couldn’t tell me what happened before they stepped outside, or what happened after. She didn’t know if they had been alone together earlier. She saw a kiss. Wallace saw it too.

That was what she knew.

I had wanted an answer for three years. I didn’t expect it to fit in one sentence.

“Did Roy know you saw?” I asked.

Trudy looked down at her purse again. “He came over to us later. He knew.”

“What did he say?”

“That he was sorry. He asked us not to tell you.”

I asked whether he threatened them. She said no. He didn’t. She said Roy told them it had been a mistake and asked them to stay out of it.

Then she added, “I think he was embarrassed. And I think we were scared of being pulled into it.”

She didn’t say that made it right. I appreciated that, though I was too mad to tell her.

“Why didn’t you answer me?” I asked.

Trudy’s eyes got wet. She didn’t cry. “I was ashamed. I didn’t know how to tell you, and after a while, I didn’t want to.”

I said, “You could’ve told me that much.”

“I know.”

Then she said she had let the silence go on because each day made the next day harder. It sounded like something I could understand and still hate. Those are not opposites, I guess.

I asked if Wallace would talk to me too. Trudy said she would ask him, but she wouldn’t make him. I told her I wasn’t asking her to arrange a big meeting. I just wanted to hear what he saw and what he did with it.

We agreed to talk later, away from the bank. I didn’t hug her. I didn’t tell her it was okay. I went out to my car and sat with both hands on the wheel for a while.

Roy was at work. I could’ve called him right then, but I knew I’d either start yelling or ask questions I wasn’t ready to hear the answers to. So I drove home and made a list on the back of an envelope.

Did he kiss her?

Did he know they saw?

Why did he tell me to let it go?

I had written the last one twice before I noticed.

Three days later.

Trudy called while I was folding towels. She said Wallace was willing to talk on the phone. I put the towels in a pile and sat down at the kitchen table.

Wallace sounded tired. Maybe he was nervous. I wasn’t in a place to be generous about it.

“I saw the kiss,” he said. “I didn’t see anything before or after.”

“Did Roy talk to you?”

“Yes. He asked us not to tell you.”

“Why did you agree?”

There was a pause. I heard a truck go by on his end. I remember the sound because the kitchen window was cracked and I could hear the same kind of truck outside my house.

“I thought I was staying out of your marriage,” he said. “That was what I told myself. Really, I didn’t want an ugly conversation. I let it be your problem without giving you the chance to know there was a problem.”

I didn’t say anything for a second.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

I asked if he’d told Trudy not to answer me. He said no. He said they both stopped responding, and he was part of that. He also said he hadn’t known how to pick up after the first few weeks, then the first few months, and eventually he let it become permanent.

I asked whether he thought Roy had been having an affair. Wallace said he didn’t know. He saw the kiss and nothing more. He wasn’t going to pretend he had proof of something he didn’t see.

That mattered. I didn’t want anyone feeding me a story just because they thought I needed one.

“Thanks for telling me straight,” I said.

“I should’ve done it three years ago.”

“Yes,” I said. “You should have.”

I hung up and sat there beside the laundry. I felt sorry for Trudy and Wallace in some small way. Then I got mad again. They had known I was asking where they went. Roy had known why I was asking. I had spent years wondering if I had said something wrong at a holiday dinner or on one of those trips.

I didn’t have a perfect record with them. I could be nosy. I could talk over people when I got going. I had even made a joke once about Trudy being late, and she hadn’t laughed. For a long time, I went over that, trying to see if that was the thing.

It wasn’t. Not according to what she told me.

Roy came home a little after six. He asked if I was all right because I was still sitting at the table with the towels beside me. I told him I had spoken with Trudy and Wallace.

He put his keys down. “About what?”

“The anniversary party.”

He stood still by the counter. I don’t mean he froze. He just stopped moving, and I could see his face change before he answered.

“What did they tell you?” he asked.

“That you kissed Candace outside. That you knew they saw. That you asked them not to tell me.”

He sat down across from me. His hands stayed on the table, not quite touching mine.

“Did you kiss her?” I asked.

“Yes.”

The word was so plain. I had been braced for a speech, maybe. An excuse with a lot of parts. I got one word.

“Did you know they saw?”

“Yes.”

“Did you ask them to keep it from me?”

“Yes.”

I looked at him. “And every time I asked why they disappeared, you told me to let it go.”

“I didn’t know what else to say.”

“You could’ve told me the truth.”

“I know.”

He said he had been drinking that night. He said he and Candace had stepped outside, and he kissed her. He said it went no further. I asked him if that was the full truth.

“It is,” he said.

I wanted to believe the calm way he said it. I also knew a calm voice didn’t prove anything. Neither did his hand reaching across the table, so I moved mine away.

He said he had been ashamed, and that when Trudy and Wallace left our lives, he saw a way to avoid telling me. He said he kept thinking he’d tell me later, when there was a better time. Then the weeks passed, and I kept asking about our friends, and each time he said let it go because he didn’t want to open up what he’d done.

“I thought if I kept quiet, it would stay one bad thing,” he said.

“It didn’t stay one thing,” I told him. “You made me think I had lost them for some reason I couldn’t figure out. You watched me ask what I did wrong.”

He rubbed both hands over his face. “I know.”

“No, Roy. You knew. That’s different.”

He looked down at the table. I could hear the refrigerator click on behind him.

I asked what he wanted me to do with the fact that he said it went no further. He said he understood I might not believe him. He said he would answer whatever I asked, and he would go to counseling with me if I wanted.

I was still angry. His willingness to go didn’t put trust back where it had been. It just meant he wasn’t refusing the first thing I asked.

“I don’t know if I’m staying,” I said. “I’m not deciding tonight.”

“I understand.”

“I need the whole truth. Not the version that lets you sleep.”

He nodded. “Okay.”

I wanted him to ask me to forgive him. I also would’ve been furious if he had. There was no useful thing he could say right then, and I didn’t want to help him find one.

I slept in the spare room that night. He didn’t follow me there. I was glad he didn’t, and then I felt guilty for being glad. That is how my brain works when things go bad. It starts looking for some small way I might be unfair.

The following week.

Trudy asked if I would meet for coffee. I said yes, but I told her I wasn’t ready to act like nothing had happened. She said she understood and would meet wherever I wanted.

We sat at a little place near the old mill road. I kept turning my paper cup around, though there was no reason to. Trudy apologized without asking me to make her feel better about it.

“I was afraid you’d hate me,” she said.

“I did, for a while.”

She nodded. “I don’t blame you.”

“I kept thinking I must’ve done something. I went back over everything.”

“I know. I should’ve called you.”

“Yes.”

She told me she and Wallace had talked about it more than once. She said the longer they waited, the more they felt like calling would mean explaining why they hadn’t called before. That wasn’t a good reason. She knew it.

“I miss what we had,” she said.

“So do I,” I told her. “But I can’t just go back to it.”

“I understand.”

I didn’t say never. I didn’t say someday. I told her I needed space and that if I wanted to talk again, I’d be the one to reach out. She said okay.

I did feel bad seeing her sit there with her cup in both hands. I also knew I had spent three years carrying the part she had left me with. I wasn’t going to rush to take care of her feelings now.

That afternoon, I looked up a couples counselor. I picked one who had an opening the next week and made the appointment myself. Roy asked if I wanted him to call. I said no. I wanted to know where we were going and when, without turning it into one more thing he could manage for me.

He didn’t argue.

Before the appointment, I took a board game down from the shelf. It was one we used to play with Trudy and Wallace, the kind where somebody always insisted on counting the score twice. I set it on the table, then left the box closed.

Roy came into the room and saw it there.

“Do you want to play?” he asked.

“Not tonight.”

He nodded. I put the counselor’s address beside the game so I wouldn’t forget it. The next conversation would be at that office. I wasn’t promising to stay, and I wasn’t promising to leave.

The board game stayed closed. The appointment was on the calendar.