Tears welled in her eyes, spilling over. “It isn’t what you think.” Her voice broke. “I didn’t know how to tell you. I was afraid you’d walk away again.” She covered her face with her hands, sobbing. “It’s not another man in that way. It’s your father.”
Michael went still, as if struck. His father’s face surged in memory: the shouting, the slammed door, the bitter words that drove him out. He had built his military life on the ashes of that argument. Now Sarah’s words cut through the years like shrapnel.