The week after the hotel was a honeymoon, but not the naive one of our youth. This was a honeymoon forged in fire, tempered by a secret we wore under our clothes like a second skin. We moved through our days with a new, electric awareness. A loaded glance over the cereal box could stop my heart. A casual brush of his hand against the small of my back in the kitchen felt like a promise whispered in code. We were conspirators in plain sight, our shared knowledge a live wire humming between us in the middle of grocery stores and paediatrician’s waiting rooms.
We talked. God, did we talk. In bed after the kids were asleep, with the lights off, faces inches apart on the same pillow, we dissected every moment with the reverence of archaeologists uncovering a lost civilization. Our civilization
