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I SUGGESTED TO ROGER that he tell his brother about me, about us, because his brother was coming into town to visit while Roger’s wife would be away. Enlisting his brother as our ally could have helped us arrange a lot of time together, at least doubling the length of the afternoons we’d contented …

I’d like to say that I didn’t want Roger to leave his wife, but I don’t think that’s entirely true. I’m a relatively impatient person, and I can be short-tempered. I hated the new limits imposed by his illness. His marriage was an inconvenience, and one he explicitly framed as a financial obstacle …

I didn’t see Roger before the surgery, but his immediate recovery went well enough that he managed a solo trip to his DC condo about a month later, and I spent the night with him there. By this time, they’d determined that he had brain cancer and it was not curable. “If I could, I’d leave you four …

It was easier to obsess over concrete factors, like money, than to confront my existential and actual helplessness. I thought a lot about other mistresses during those days, the ones in positions more precarious than mine because they were in love with their married men or completely relied upon th…