“It would make a lot more sense if she had imagined this whole thing, her whole life. Now would just be now, attached to some other, more straightforward past.”

“Now that it was finally here, she wasn’t surprised to find herself still reluctant to start it. Reluctant to end the part of her life when this conversation hadn’t happened yet. Reluctant to find out what her life would look like after it.”

“But there’s this giant deception at the foundation of their relationship, their happiness. This impure motive. There was that small mistake that the woman made, uttering the wrong number. And then the man reconstructed an entire intrigue, a big thick plot— a seduction and affair and relationship and marriage proposal, a whole life— around her error and his notice of it. Taking advantage of her lie.But does that make their relationship less real? Does that make it impossible that they genuinely love each other?”

“After all, she herself had done the very worst thing imaginable. And she was a good person. Wasn’t she?”

“She fought the urge to look away, to hide her own eyes. Struggled against the long-ingrained habit of disguising her own lies, now that she was finally telling the truth.”

“Maybe he was wondering if they could make it, such liars, together. A marriage based on so many things that were not true. A life lived so falsely, for so long.Kate didn’t know that Dexter hadn’t admitted all his lies. Just as she hadn’t revealed every one of her secrets.”

“Kate was beginning to put distance between her sense of betrayal, her anger, and Dexter’s behavior. She was beginning to take his side. Or at least beginning to be able to see things from it.”