Chapter 2
I couldn't get a full breath in. "What? Scott, we're married."
"Not for much longer."
In the background, a woman laughed, close enough that she wasn't just passing through the room. He hung up before I could say another word.
I drove home in a silence so complete I could hear my own heartbeat over the radio I never turned on. The flower beds I'd planted were still blooming along the walkway. The porch swing where we used to eat cereal on Sunday mornings still creaked in the wind. I'd painted those shutters myself the summer we moved in, standing on a ladder in ninety-degree heat because Scott said hiring someone felt wasteful.
Inside, it already looked like somebody else's life. His clothes were gone from the closet. His gaming setup had vanished from the den. Every photo from our honeymoon in Santorini had been stripped off the hallway wall, leaving pale rectangles where the frames used to hang.
On the kitchen counter sat a thick stack of divorce papers, and beside them, a note in his handwriting.
May you like
Put it here. No drama.
I sat down slowly at the island where we used to eat breakfast together. Then I got up, walked to the bedroom closet, and reached behind my winter coats for a shoebox I'd hidden there five months earlier, back when I'd first started noticing the late nights and the credit card alerts that didn't match his stories.
