But the guilt was swallowed almost instantly by indignation, as though she were the one who'd been wronged.
Her head snapped up, bristling like a cat whose tail had been stepped on, her voice shrill enough to cut glass:
"Julian! What the hell are you talking about?!"
"Following me is bad enough, but now you're going to slander me too?"
"Five years! Five years together, and you can't even give me the most basic trust?!"
I nearly laughed. I actually nearly laughed.
She hadn't addressed a single word of her own deception. Not one. Instead, she'd flipped the entire thing on its head, piling every ounce of blame onto me—as though the one in the wrong wasn't the cheating wife, but the husband who'd uncovered the truth.
Trust.
I turned the word over in my mind, and it felt like the punchline to the worst joke of the century.
"You're the one who lied to me first. And now you want to lecture me about trust?"
Louise faltered, her mouth opening and closing. Then she stiffened her neck and barreled on:
"So what if I lied to you?"
"Do you have any idea how much pressure I'm under every single day? And what do you do? Cook. Clean. That's it. What else have you ever done for me?"