The night I came home early and found Tessa barefoot on my couch while Caleb opened a bottle of red wine.
“She was locked out,” Caleb said too fast. “I told her she could wait here while the locksmith came.”
Tessa waved a hand, laughing. “I’m such a disaster. Thank God for Caleb.”
The locksmith never came. She “found” her keys in a tote bag ten minutes later.
Then the throw blanket smelled like her perfume.
Then Caleb’s phone started living facedown.
Then he started stepping onto the porch to take calls he claimed were work-related, though logistics emergencies apparently made him smile now.
Then Tessa needed help carrying a mirror, then a bookshelf, then a rug, then a box of tile samples, then a patio umbrella. She never called a moving company. She called Caleb.
I told myself I was imagining patterns because I came from divorce. My parents had turned suspicion into a household religion. My mother checked my father’s jacket pockets. My father read my mother’s credit card statements. Their whole marriage became an investigation before it became paperwork. I swore I would not live that way. I would trust. I would ask directly. I would not become the woman who saw betrayal everywhere.