Ben wasn't sure he believed that there wouldn't be further fuel for the fire, but November seemed convinced. She'd made allusions to the idea several times, despite his doing the contrary. He was forced to consider that perhaps he was being unfair, letting his judgement be skewed by emotion however distant he felt. November was likely the more objective judge of the situation, between the two of them, so if she said the sting of rumors were unlikely to stay with Nora and were unlikely to resurface... then he supposed he'd have to accept that as the answer, and decide where to go from there.

(Or he could have washed his hands of the whole affair. It wouldn't have been difficult to produce proof of what had happened, if he wanted the scales tipped in favor of divorce — but what he wanted or didn't want wasn't supposed to be a deciding factor here, he reminded himself. He was trying to do what was best for Nora, and that was it.)

He couldn't pretend that Melody had been anything other than a good mother, at least from his perspective. Up until this incident, anyway — he was still angry with her for having so little concern for how her actions last night would impact their daughter, but otherwise she was a better mother than Ben had dared to hope, back when she'd been pregnant and despondent more often than not. If November thought it wasn't detrimental to Eleanora's reputation for Ben to remain married to her, then there was no reason to deprive Nora of her mother's care and attention. So where did that leave them? Melody didn't love him. He suspected he would never really trust her again.

"I guess maybe I should move out, then," he said with a weary sigh. "I don't know. I don't want to leave Nora, but — I don't want to live with her. I mean, we've already done that — living together and avoiding each other. It was miserable."

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