“Ev, would you like to dance?”
Evan turned to his wife and raised his eyebrows in question. Katarina smiled warmly and nodded. Only then did he stand and turn to face Miri.
“Of course.”
He extended his hand. Miri took it and followed him to the dance floor. The song was slow, so Evan took her right hand in his left and placed his right on the side of her hip. He moved with confidence, and Miri easily followed his lead. He was tall and wide, she was shorter and slender, but they’d had a lot of practice dancing together.
She looked at his face. So handsome. Full head of wavy dark hair now graying at the temples. Thick eyebrows and large deep-set brown eyes. His long nose was just a little crooked, and he had a thin scar on his chin below his full lips. She stared at his eyes, willing them to look at hers, but he gazed out over the top of her upturned face, his features completely neutral.
“Thank you for dancing with me,” she finally said.
He nodded. “Of course.”
“Bradley looked so handsome up there, didn’t he?”
“He did indeed.”
“He looks so much like you. It’s eerie.”
“Well, I am his father.”
“And he looked just like you did on our wedding day.” Evan moved them around the dance floor without acknowledging her comment. She sighed. “I’ve told you how sorry I am, Ev. I hoped that your generosity would extend to me by now. You have a new wife, and both of the kids tell me you’re very happy. Why are you still punishing me?”
“I’m not punishing you. You are an acquaintance with whom I share a history and two children. I’m civil to you, as I am to everyone I know. What more do you want, Miriam?”
He’d never once used her full name before. She noticed. “That’s all I am to you? An acquaintance? After everything we’ve been through?”
“After everything we’ve been through I’d think you’d consider yourself lucky to be that. I’m told Oscar still has tinnitus.”
She sighed again. “We’re going to be in each other’s lives, Ev. Holidays with children and grandchildren and all. Can’t you forgive me?”
“I have forgiven you, Miriam. I couldn’t have moved on without it. But I don’t know what else you want from me.”
“I explained it all in my letter to you. I never meant to hurt you. I wasn’t trying to end our marriage or destroy our family. I never wanted any of that.”
“No, you just wanted to fuck my best friend.”
“It wasn’t like that! Please understand. That’s what I want. I want you to understand that I didn’t do any of that out of spite. I spent three weeks writing that letter so you’d understand.”
“I didn’t read your letter.”
“What do you mean you didn’t read it?”
“I didn’t see the point.”
Stunned, Miri stopped moving, so Evan did too. They stood in a static dancers’ pose.
“I poured my heart into that letter.”
“I’m sure you did.”
“But why didn’t you read it?”
“Why would I? As the old maps say, there be dragons. Reading it would have upset me, and I didn’t want or need that.”
Miri was dazed. It never occurred to her that Evan wouldn’t read her letter. All of her expectations hinged on him understanding why she strayed from her vows. He had convicted her only on her actions, not on the complex context that determined them. He didn’t know about her crushing guilt at her affair, the many times she tried to end it, the way Oscar had manipulated her emotions so that she’d sleep with him in the beginning and how he’d pressured her steadily to keep her coming back to him for two years. Evan didn’t know that he was her true love, and that she regretted everything she’d done with Oscar. He had to know it. All of it!
“Would you read it now?”
“No.”
“Please, Ev. Please. For everything we once had.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not? I don’t think I’m asking for too much.”
“I burned it.”
“Burned it? But why?”
“I told you. It may have been cathartic for you to write it, but I processed my anger and grief differently.”
“But don’t you want to know why I did it? What it meant to me?”
“No. It doesn’t matter.”
Miriam was completely flummoxed. Evan didn’t know how devastated she felt when he caught them at Oscar’s house. How afraid she was for Evan as he pummeled his former best friend, slugging him repeatedly about the head; she didn’t want him imprisoned or sued. How humiliated she was when she received the divorce papers in front of her friends at the club. And how sad and lonely she felt when he moved out of their house. Tricia was in college, but Bradley was still at home, and she couldn’t look at their son — a mini-Evan — without despairing. Evan didn’t know the promises she made to be better mother, a better wife, a better person.
“It does matter. It has to!”
“I’m sorry, Miriam. You and Oscar betrayed a marriage and a friendship, so I ended both. The reasons don’t matter any more. I don’t think they ever did. It was enough that you did it.”
The song came to an end, and Evan released Miri’s hand. He bent his head towards her in an abbreviated bow, then turned and walked back to his table. His countenance shifted from neutral to beaming as he caught Katarina’s eyes.
Miri drifted slowly off the dance floor. For the past six years she’d been sure that Evan was just being emotionally stubborn. But he never knew her pain. Never knew her remorse. Her regret. Never knew that she didn’t mean to do it.
She desperately wanted him to know that it was the awful combination of her own insecurities and a predator masquerading as a friend who saw an opportunity and manipulated her into something she’d never dreamed she’d do. And she couldn’t see how to end it on her own.
It wasn’t her fault. It couldn’t be. And Evan needed to know that.
She looked across the reception and saw Evan talking with Kat, smiling playfully, holding hands comfortably, laughing the way that she imagined she and Evan did before Oscar’s seduction.
It had to matter. It wasn’t her fault. She wasn’t the bad guy. She couldn’t be.
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