Teddy Conrad said, "This is wrong" as he lay there with Peggy in his arms, but he didn't feel it was wrong, not until he was driving home to his girls.
It hadn't felt wrong at all; it had felt right to be wanted. To be desired. To be something other than second choice, something other than the guy who is scrambling to prove himself yet never succeeding, who is striving to earn his wife's love yet never grasping it. When a man has been tossed in the midst of the desert, and he's been thirsty a long time, and he stumbles across his first source of water, they tell him to take small sips, to be sure he doesn't vomit, but he can't hear reason when his throat is parched and the water starts flowing. He has to swallow it all in one greedy gulp and damn the consequences.
And there are consequences. The yawning emptiness that he's filled in Peggy's bed is his own private emptiness. It's not his daughters'. It's not Maddie's. It's not Daphne's.
Parting couples ease themselves with soothing lies that their children care deeply about their parent's own personal happiness, but Teddy knows that's not how things really work. His children didn't ask to be born into a fated marriage, and they didn't ask to have their family ripped apart, and they're young and innocent and in need of the stability and security that only their parents can provide. And now, in a single afternoon, he's severed the last thread holding all that in place. He's passed the point of no return.
He could cling a little longer to that unraveling rope, give his girls a few more months of peace perhaps, but he can't do it without piling lies on top of more lies, and he's seen what his last lot of lies has done to Rayna, what it's done to their marriage, what it's done to her respect for him. He won't be able to breathe under a new mountain of them. The lies will crush him and eventually crush his family.
This has to end. This loveless marriage has to end, and his precious daughters have to pay the price of their parents' weaknesses. And that - not the first true moment of being wanted he's experienced in years, not the passion with Peggy – is the wrong. Why should the innocent have to pay for the sins of the guilty? Why can't he spare his daughters every ounce of pain that's sure to follow, no matter how hard he and Rayna strive to be good co-parents?
He puts a hand to his chest, one still on the wheel. It hurts there, like a cramp. His breathing feels tight. That's the way guilt feels inside, creeping its way through the flesh.
He doesn't see any other way out of this collapsing tunnel but to accelerate toward the light at the end. The light of love. The love that is a raft for a drowning man – this chance to be wanted, admired, desired again. He has to grasp it, or he'll drown. And if he drowns, he'll take Rayna with him. She's been treading water for so long. She deserves to swim to shore, where Deacon's long been waiting for her.
Teddy has to go see his wife. He has to be the one to ask for the divorce, before they both pull each other down into the watery depths. Their children will flail, but they won't drown. They'll make it to shore in the end. All of them.