[...] Was it not having to look at him directly; was it the unusually lively nature of our dinner conversation; was it the crushing guilt of our expensive renovation; was it rainwater having filled the cistern of my body for so many years that I was a vessel running over; was it simply the goddamn booze that led me to utter Unsayable Things like Marriage has been difficult for me for a long time and Monogamy is harder for some people than for others, until at last my husband, not a jealous creature but certainly not a stupid one either, turned more sharply in his chair to see me fully and said my lover’s name aloud. His name had flitted between us all evening, but finally my husband asked directly whether I was talking about him, and I said, almost casually, as though I had not spent more than three years in vigilant avoidance of revealing such a thing—my god, so simply in the final hour—“Yes.”

Barely missing a beat, my husband asked whether I was in love with him, his voice also strangely nonplussed as though we had conversations of this nature all the time—as though we were a couple who commonly discussed our extracurricular romantic entanglements, maybe even used them as foreplay. Momentarily, in the firelit lounge, I felt like I was living one of my recurring dreams: that euphoria of waking and believing my husband knew and had given me his blessing, had either released me or granted me the freedom to pursue my own life. All at once, the dream seemed right in my hands to grasp: so close, so attainable. All it would take was my saying yes—the truth will set you free—and so I did, and though I held my breath for several seconds, the world did not stop spinning on its axis; the walls of the resort did not come falling down, water from the park flooding our lounge like the Titanic. Rather, my husband said more quietly, though still calm, Have you slept with him? or maybe Have you had sex with him? (how often I tried to remember later which phrasing he used: the euphemistic or the literal)—and I, who prided myself on being a reader of people, felt a jolt of elation that the worst had already passed: I had admitted my love and my husband was still sitting there looking at me, a worried but almost loving expression on his face, and so I affirmed again, “Yes.”