I spent the rest of that day watching the house differently.
I watched the way Steven moved through rooms. I watched where he positioned himself relative to Lucy and where Thomas was when he did it. I watched his eyes when Lucy crossed the kitchen. I watched his hands. I watched his jaw.
I had been married to this man for four years.
I had loved him genuinely.
I had trusted him with the kind of trust you build carefully over time, the kind you think you’ve earned through observation and shared experience and the slow accumulation of knowing someone.What I saw that day did not fit the man I thought I knew.
It fit something else.
That night, after everyone slept, Lucy appeared at our bedroom door, and I gestured for her to come with me quietly. We went to the back porch instead of the roof this time — the night was cool and clear, the kind of October air that bites at the edges — and I sat across from her in the patio chairs and waited.
