“My husband texted from vegas: ‘just married my coworker. You’re pathetic BTW.’ I replied: ‘cool.’ Then I blocked his cards and changed the house locks. Next morning, police were at my door…”

I had fallen asleep on the couch downstairs with the television on mute, some late-night infomercial bathing the living room in a cold silver wash. Ethan was supposed to be in Las Vegas for a work conference. He’d kissed me on the cheek before leaving that morning, grabbed the carry-on I had reminded him three times not to overpack, and said, “Don’t wait up if my flight gets in weird.” It was an ordinary sentence, the kind married people say all the time, and if there was anything off in the way he said it, I missed it. Or maybe I didn’t miss it. Maybe I felt it and dismissed it because women are trained to second-guess their instincts when the truth would be inconvenient.

My neck was stiff from sleeping crooked against the armrest. One sock had slipped half off my foot. An empty mug sat on the coffee table beside a stack of unopened mail and the candle I kept forgetting to throw away even though it had burned down to a stub two months earlier. The house was so quiet that when my phone buzzed against the glass tabletop, the sound cut through the room like a blade.