"Why didn't you tell me?"
I was protecting myself.
"At first, I thought I'd tell you as soon as the case was over. I didn't want you dragged into years of court hearings, lawyers, and family fighting. Then one year became two. Two became five. And after that... I didn't know how to tell my wife the man she'd married hadn't even given her his real name."
I looked at him for a long time.
"You let me build a life with someone I didn't even know."
"Every year I stayed quiet made the truth harder to say. Eventually, I wasn't protecting you anymore. I was protecting myself from the moment I'd have to watch you decide whether you could ever trust me again."
Honesty finally became easier than silence.
I confessed everything — the safe, Diane's office, and how close I'd come to taking Lily and leaving. We cried until the wine went warm.
