“I’m fine,” I said. “You just seemed a little… bored earlier.”

Alarm brightened her eyes and she hurried to assure me she was most certainly not. I should have known. Any other time, Elena would have no problem telling me she wasn’t enjoying herself. But a honeymoon was different. It was a ritual and, as such, came with rules, and admitting she was bored broke them all.

Shortly after I met Elena, I’d realized that while she squirmed and chafed under the weight of human rules and expectations, there was one aspect of them she embraced almost to the point of worship: rituals. Like Christmas. Ask Elena to bring cookies for the parent-and-tot picnic and she’ll buy them at the bakery and then dump them into a plastic container so they’d look homemade. But come mid-December, she’ll whip herself into a frenzy of baking, loving every minute because that’s part of Christmas.

When the subject of “making it official for the kids’ sake” came up, I knew she’d want the ritual-a real wedding, the kind she’d dreamed of eighteen years ago when we’d bought the rings, her face alight with dreams of a white dress and a new life and happily-ever-after.

Instead of the happily-ever-after, she got a bite on the hand and the kind of new life that had once existed only in her nightmares.

I won’t make excuses for what I did. The truth is that your whole life can change with one split-second decision, and it doesn’t matter if you told yourself you’d never do it or if you stepped into that moment with no intention of doing it. All it takes is that one second of absolute panic when the solution shines right there in front of you, and you grab it… only to have it turn to ash in your hand. There is no excuse for what I did.