Vlado chose Friday because we would have the whole weekend to talk. He said that before telling me why. We sat in the kitchen, lunch ready, his phone switched off. He was unusually calm. Later I understood the conversation had already lasted weeks for him, inside his head, with prepared sentences. For me it began only when he said he had had a relationship with another woman several years earlier.
He spoke precisely: when it began, how long it lasted, that it was over. He cited no receipt I could check because I needed no evidence then. I recognized the month I thought work was troubling him and the weekend when I packed his bag for a supposed trip. I asked several questions, then stopped. Vlado said I could ask anything. I did not yet know what anything meant in a life that had just shifted.
On Saturday he made breakfast and suggested a walk. He said he did not want us trapped indoors with the problem. I did not want to put on a coat. I sat in a room looking through the window. By evening he was impatient. He reminded me he had confessed voluntarily, could have stayed silent, and had behaved differently for years. Every sentence placed his relief on one side and my newly begun pain on the other, an obstacle spoiling progress.
On Sunday he asked whether we could try normality from Monday. That was when I first shouted. What angered me most was not normality but the calendar behind it. He had chosen when to stop hiding and now wanted to choose when I stopped feeling. I said confession was no contract agreeing to his schedule. If honesty mattered only while quickly bringing forgiveness, we were still mostly talking about him.
He went to sleep in another room. The next day I went to work, did what I could, and returned without a decision about our marriage. For weeks I asked questions at awkward times. Sometimes he answered; sometimes he tried to hurry the discussion. I refused to believe I needed a final outcome to be entitled to time. We arranged conversations with help from someone who would not turn us into competitors for the better version of the past.
I still cannot say how it ends. That irritates some people more than the affair itself. They want to know whether I am staying or leaving, as though indecision were an additional fault. For now I know Friday is not his designated confession day, nor Monday my deadline for a new beginning. When he suggested a walk last week, I accepted. We walked a long time, and for the first time he did not ask whether it meant we were all right.