Betrayal

They decide finally not to speak of it, the one blemish in their otherwise blameless marriage. It happened as these things do, before the permanence was set, before the children grew complicated, before the quench of loving one another became all each of them wanted from this life. Years later the bite of not knowing (and not wanting to know) still pierces the doer as much as the one to whom it was done: the threadbare lying, the insufferable longing, the inimitable lack of touching, the undoing undone.