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Both of those things are true. That is the part nobody understands, and it is the reason I could never once explain the divorce to anybody without sounding like a man complaining that his husband was too capable.

Gregory was not a cold man. Gregory was the warmest person in any room he entered.

He was simply never in the room with me.

"Why are you here," I sighed, to two enormous tents and nobody at all.

* * *

Steven was awake when I came in, which I had not planned on.

"Hey." He was on his phone in the dark, face lit blue. "You okay? Where were you?"

"Checking the staging."

"At midnight?"

"Timber shims take up moisture."

"Oh my God, you're so—" he made a delighted noise "—you're so you. Come here, your feet must be freezing."

I got into bed. My feet were freezing.

Steven put the phone down, which he rarely does, and rolled over to face me. For a while neither of us said anything, and it was — I want to be fair to him — pleasant. Steven is easy to lie next to. That was on the list of reasons I was marrying him. It was near the top of the list.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Mm."

"And you can absolutely tell me to shut up." His voice had gone quiet in the dark. "Why did you and Gregory get divorced?"

I know the answer to that question the way I know the citation for a case I argued.

It has a shape and a sequence and a complete evidentiary record. There is a specific number of consecutive nights he was not there. There were three missed birthdays and one funeral. There is a conversation in an airport in which he said this is the last big one in a tone that made me understand, standing there holding a coffee, that he believed it.

And there is one night that appears on no list, because I have never said it out loud to another living person.

I could have answered him immediately. I have never confessed any of it to anybody, and the reason is straightforward: there is no version of that account in which I do not come out sounding like a man who was left, over and over, by somebody who kept cheerfully coming back to him.

"We wanted different things," I said.

Steven was quiet for a second.

"Yeah," he said. "That happens."

"It does."

"That's really mature of you, babe." His fingers found mine under the duvet and squeezed.

"Mm."

"Like — genuinely." He let go, yawned, and put a hand somewhere near my shoulder in the dark. "Some people get so bitter after a divorce. You're not bitter at all. I don't think I've ever heard you say one bad thing about Gregory."

I waited a moment.

"No," I said.

"That's really healthy."