Underneath, he started listing what he’d just learned. That she wasn’t cheating. That the locked bathroom door meant panic, not betrayal. That her questions about whether they were okay weren’t manipulation but genuine terror that he was going to leave.
Then, under that list, he wrote something that made his chest ache.
“I’m scared too. Not of you. Of failing you. Of not knowing how to help when you’re hurting. I don’t want a divorce. I don’t want distance. I want help. Can we take this to someone who actually knows what to do? Because I don’t, and I’m tired of guessing wrong.”
He left the notebook exactly where he’d found it, open to the page he’d written.
Then he sat there at the kitchen table, waiting.
Emma appeared in the doorway and stopped when she saw him sitting there. Her eyes immediately went to the notebook, and all the color drained from her face.
“You read it,” she whispered, and it wasn’t a question.
“I did,” Daniel said, and his own voice was shaking. “And I’m so sorry, Emma. I’m sorry I spent months fighting a problem I never even asked you about.”
She stood frozen in the doorway, clutching the frame as if she needed it to hold her up.
“I thought you’d think I was crazy.”
