I paid sixty-seven dollars for the dinner where my wife took everything from me. I just didn’t know it yet when I picked up the menu.

It was our 30th anniversary. Applebee’s. The booth by the window, the one Diane always asks for because she likes watching the parking lot.

Thirty years and we still ended up at the same chain place. That was us. That was the whole marriage, I thought. Comfortable. Boring in a good way.

She ordered the bourbon steak. She always gets the same thing. I remember she was smiling at the waiter, asking about his kids. Diane talks to everybody.

And I sat there knowing I was about to ruin it.

I’d been carrying this thing for years. I’d practiced what I’d say in the truck. I figured thirty years earned her the truth, even a truth this ugly. I actually thought I was being brave. That’s the part that kills me now.

“I need to tell you something,” I said.

She set her fork down. Real slow. She didn’t look scared. I should’ve noticed that.

I just said it. “In 2014, I had an affair. Seven months. A woman from the office.”

I waited for her to cry. To throw something. To stand up and walk out into that parking lot she loved watching.

She didn’t do any of it. She just looked at me. Steady. Like she was waiting for me to keep going.

So I kept going. God help me, I kept going.

“There’s more,” I said. My voice was shaking. Hers wasn’t. “She called me last month. Lisa. The woman. She has a son.”

Diane picked her water up and took a sip.

“He’s ten,” I said. “He’s got the gap. The same gap in his front teeth. Same as mine.”

That was the thing I’d been scared to say out loud for a month. The gap. My dad had it, I have it, and now there’s a ten-year-old boy three towns over who has it too. I’d seen the picture. I knew.

I waited for that to land like a bomb.

Diane folded her napkin. Folded it neat, into a little square, and laid it down next to her plate like we were finishing a normal dinner.

Then she said it.

“I’ve known since 2015.”

I want to tell you I had some big reaction. The truth is my mouth just went dry and I couldn’t make words. I sat there like an idiot with my hands in my lap.

“What?” That’s all I got out. “What?”

“Brenda told me,” she said. “Easter, 2015. Remember when she stayed in the kitchen with me after everybody left?”

I did remember. My cousin Brenda and Diane, washing dishes, laughing about something. I’d walked through and grabbed a beer and thought, nice, the women get along. I’d been relieved.

“She didn’t mean to,” Diane said. “She felt awful. She thought I should know.”