I had always believed that a person’s past deserved respect. My husband had a life before me, a previous marriage, shared memories, and a nine-year-old daughter. I had never tried to erase his ex-wife from that history. But on his forty-fifth birthday, I discovered that there was an enormous difference between respecting someone’s past and trusting them blindly.
Two weeks before the celebration, Andrew announced that he had invited his ex-wife, Marina.
«She’s still part of the family,» he said casually, as though he were talking about some distant relative.
I said nothing. Marina and I had never argued, but we certainly weren’t close friends. We usually saw each other at his daughter’s school events or exchanged brief messages about gifts and other practical matters.
