in six years.
There was more.
A search.
Apartments downtown.
Luxury rentals.
One-bedroom.
Six-month lease.
I sat very still.
This wasn’t an affair that existed only in hotel rooms.
Someone was planning something.
I photographed everything.
At 9:23, I heard the garage door.
Mark.
I moved quickly.
My suitcase was already hidden in the guest-room closet.
I placed the tablet exactly where I had found it and walked into the kitchen.
The door opened.
Mark entered carrying his coat over one arm.
He looked normal.
Completely normal.
“Hey,” he said.
I stared at the man I had slept beside for thirty-one years.
He had kissed our son’s wife less than ninety minutes earlier.
And he smiled at me.
“You’re home early,” I said.
He shrugged.
“Meeting ended.”
Meeting.
I almost admired the ease of it.
“How was it?”
“Boring.”
He opened the refrigerator.
“Anything for dinner?”
I watched him
bend down.
There was a faint red mark near his collar.
Lipstick.
Jenna wore that shade.
Rosewood.
I knew because I had given it to her.
For her bridal shower.
“There’s leftover chicken,” I said.
“Perfect.”
Mark removed the container.
Then he paused.
“You okay?”
There it was.
Thirty-one years of familiarity.
He sensed something.
I forced my shoulders to relax.
“Headache.”
He looked at me for another second.
Then nodded.
“Take something.”
“I will.”
He heated his dinner.
I stood across the kitchen watching him chew.
Watching him drink water.
Watching him scroll his phone.
At one point, he smiled at something on the screen.
I knew who it was.
I could feel it.
I wanted to take the glass in my hand and throw it against the wall.
Instead I said, “I’m tired. Going to bed.”
He barely looked up.
“Night.”
I climbed the stairs.
Ten minutes later,
I heard the television.
I waited.
Then quietly retrieved my suitcase.
The old back staircase led from the upstairs hallway to the laundry room.
Mark couldn’t see it from the living room.
I carried the suitcase down one step at a time.
At the side door, I stopped.
For thirty-one years, that house had been my home.
I had painted the kitchen cabinets.
Raised Daniel there.
Held Mark’s mother there when she died.
Hosted Christmas.
Birthdays.
Anniversaries.
There were scratches on the pantry door marking Daniel’s height from age four to seventeen.
And suddenly I understood something.
