“I think so. He loves her. I could see it at the table — the hurt was so specific to someone who loves the person who hurt them. You don’t look like that about strangers.”
“Okay,” Donna said. “And you?”
“I’m okay,” I said. “I’m genuinely okay. Something happened tonight that needed to happen. I’m in the room now.”
“You were always in the room,” she said. “They just didn’t know it.”
I thought about that.
“Yeah,” I said. “But now they know.”
## The Week After the Dinner
Paige texted me on Sunday morning, the day after the dinner. The text said: “I want to talk when you’re ready. No rush but I don’t want to let it sit too long.”
I waited until Monday evening to call her. This was not cruelty; it was the appropriate amount of time for both of us to decompress and think.
She answered on the first ring.
“How are you?” she asked, and she asked it in the way she hadn’t asked me things in years — like the answer was the point, not like it was a preamble to something she needed to say.
“I’m okay,” I said. “Better than I expected to be this week. How are you?”
“Andrew and I talked until two in the morning on Saturday,” she said. “And then again yesterday. It’s — it’s a lot.”
“I know.”
“He’s not leaving,” she said. “I want you to know that. He’s angry and he’s hurt and he needs time, but he’s not leaving.”