I barely registered his question, responding casually, “Mm-hm.”
Silence.
Maybe he was taken aback by how easy I was to ignore. Maybe he thought I would still be waiting around for him to apologize.
A moment later, his tone softened, like he was sighing into the phone. “If only you’d been this compliant before, Elise, things could’ve turned out so differently.”
His words reached into my past, pulling out ghosts I thought I’d buried. In the five years of our marriage, countless women came to us.
The arguments.
The constant betrayals.
The parade of women who seemed to get a thrill from rubbing salt in my wounds.
The first time it happened, I lost it. I threw things around, screamed until my throat bled, and demanded answers.
But all I saw in his eyes was exhaustion.
And the same old tired excuses: 'It’s just work. I was just being polite. Nothing is going on. How often do I have to say it before you trust me?'
Apparently, I was the problem. The irrational one. The wife who couldn’t trust her husband.
So I did what I always did—I made myself question everything. Was I overreacting? Was I just too suspicious?
I apologized.
I humbled myself.
I begged.