The phone had rung twice that week with nobody on the other end when I picked up. A credit card statement had shown a charge from a steakhouse downtown I’d never once set foot inside.
“Just a work dinner,” Tyler had muttered when I asked. “I forgot to mention it.”
“You usually tell me these things.”
“I forgot,” he said, and I let that go too.
I told myself a good wife gave her husband room to breathe. I told myself the perfume could have come from an elevator, a coworker’s hug, a crowded conference room. I rinsed my coffee cup that morning, smoothed the front of my blouse, and grabbed my purse off the counter. A dentist appointment at eleven. A grocery list folded into my coat pocket. There was an unease sitting in my chest that I couldn’t quite name, the kind that settles in slowly, like dust accumulating on a shelf you’ve simply stopped looking at.
