He couldn't deny that trust had often been lacking in their relationship, from both sides. Obviously the way their marriage had started didn't put them off to a great start. He hadn't wanted to tell her anything back then, because he wasn't sure how she would react; she had often seemed volatile, but especially in the earliest days of their relationship, before Nora. In hindsight he could see that his hesitation to talk to her about anything only made it worse when it came to trust, because she betrayed him maybe without meaning to. They'd both been different people, before Nora was born — teenagers, really, however old they technically were.

The betrayal after Nora was in the picture was harder to look past. Thinking about what she'd done on New Year's Eve still hurt — but given the year they'd had since then, Ben was ready to admit that leaving had caused more damage in the end. Leaving her had been selfish — something he'd done for him, because he couldn't forgive her. All the pain caused or exacerbated by his absence since then had hurt all three of them. And at the end of the day, he had to grapple with this: her betrayal was one night, and his pulling back was months of damage. Months of damage that he almost hadn't had a chance to repair.

"I want more children," he said softly. "With you. We haven't always been as good as we could have been, to each other, but you've always been the best mother to Nora," he continued. "I want us to be a proper family again."

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