Lily later gave
Ben an identical flamingo-shaped bottle. Inside was a note:
No more secrets in drawers.
We laughed, and then we cried. The bottle now sits openly on a shelf in our living room.
Sometimes I think about how differently our lives might have unfolded if that pipe hadn’t burst. Perhaps Ben would eventually have told me. Perhaps he wouldn’t have.
I used to believe the flood exposed his secret. Now I understand that it exposed something deeper: how easily love can become an excuse for deciding what another person deserves to know.
Ben told himself he was protecting me, Lily, and our marriage. In reality, he was protecting himself from one difficult conversation. Every month he avoided it only made the truth harder to face.
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We’re still married, not because what he did was small, but because he finally stopped asking me to judge him by his intentions
