“At first, he did. Toward the end, not so much.”
“That’s a crying shame. He should’ve been telling you that every day.”
“Now I know he was probably saying that to someone else.” I stop short, gasping. “What if there was more than one?”
GAGE
“Iris…”
She launches out of her chair and leaves the room, returning with an iPhone that she plugs into a charger on the counter. “I’ve never looked through his phone, because I didn’t think I had any reason to.”
“Maybe it’s not such a great idea for you to do that now either.” I hate this idea with every fiber of my being. “What difference will it make for you to know?”
“After what I learned yesterday, I’m wondering if I knew my husband at all, or if I knew some version of him that he created for me. Does that make sense?”
“It does, but why can’t you hold on to the version of him that you knew and let the rest of it go?”
“Because I want to know. I want to try to understand why he did the things he did. Did his distraction over leading a double life lead to the crash?”
I reach out my hand to her.
She takes hold of it and lets me bring her to sit on my lap.
“I don’t want to see you hurt any more than you already have been. All you need to know is that he was unfaithful. You don’t need to know the full scope of it. Knowing won’t change anything. Like I said before, all that will do is hurt you more than you already are.”
“I appreciate where you’re coming from, and I agree with what you’re saying. It will hurt me more to find out there were others. But I need to know—and I want to know why. I can’t have those questions hanging over me for the rest of my life.”
With my arms around her, I keep her from getting up. “Iris, please… Last night, you said you’re worried about being able to take care of your kids. What if you learn something from looking at his phone that makes it impossible to do that?”
“I’m ready for whatever I might find out. I already know he wasn’t the man I thought he was, and in a way, that sort of changes how I think of him. I loved him so much. I did everything I could to make our marriage work. I thought he was doing the same thing. It’s crushing to find out otherwise, but I still need the details. I want to understand.”
“I don’t like it.”
“Thank you for caring.”
“I do care. So many people care about you. None of us wants to see you hurt any further.”
“I’ll be all right. I promise.” Because I can’t stop her, I let her up to retrieve the phone, which comes to life with a beep. “Did you go through Natasha’s phone after she died?”
“My sister uploaded the pictures from Nat’s phone to the cloud, so I’d have them, but I’ve never looked at anything else. I just couldn’t look at the rest.”
“I felt like I’d be invading his privacy or something if I went through his phone, which is silly when you think about it. He’s dead. What does he care about his privacy? But I always prided myself on being the kind of wife who didn’t pry. Turns out I should’ve been prying.”
“No, you shouldn’t have. Living like that is no kind of marriage. You either trust the person you’ve committed to spend your life with, or you don’t.”
“I trusted him,” she says sadly. “After that first time, he gave me no reason not to, or so I thought. I really believed he’d learned his lesson from nearly losing me the first time.”
“Why can’t you take what you already know, deal with it to the best of your ability and go forward from here? Knowing the full extent of it is only going to make everything worse.” I’m as certain of that as I’ve ever been of anything.
“It could make things better if I find out why.”
“Will it, though? What if you find out he never loved you, or he thought of you and the kids as a terrible burden, or some other awful thing you didn’t need to know? Please, Iris. Don’t go through his phone. Nothing good will come of that.”
She stares at the phone for a long time before she powers it down.
I’m so relieved, I’m nearly faint with it. I’m not sure why I’m so positive that looking at the phone is a bad idea, but I feel it in my bones. “Come here.”
She returns to her perch on my lap, and I wrap my arms around her while pressing my lips to her forehead.