I looked at her.
I thought about the four years of my marriage. I thought about the man sleeping upstairs.
“I believe you,” I said.
She broke.
Not dramatically. She didn’t collapse or scream. She just put her face in her hands and cried with the specific, controlled grief of someone who has been containing something enormous for a very long time, and has finally been allowed to set it down.
What I Found in the Desk Drawer While Steven Was in the Shower
The next morning I waited until I heard the water running.I had forty-five seconds to a minute, based on how long Steven typically showered. I went to his office on the second floor, which had always been off-limits in the way that some spaces in shared homes develop gravity without explicit declaration — the space of someone who works from home, whose privacy is a professional necessity, at least on the surface.
