I still loved my husband and naturally I felt guilty, incredibly guilty, like a worm, really, but I also felt liberated, I must admit, from the false virtue that had hindered me in the past. Maybe I was afraid to die without ever crossing the line. In any case, every evening at the dinner table with my husband and every night as he snored beside me in bed, I knew that I’d damaged, perhaps ruined, regrettably, the solid relationship we’d had, the same way I’d bend the stalk of a fresh flower at a tragic angle as I adjusted a bouquet just picked out at the flower stand.
