EYES OPEN

Good wives don't snoop.Except I am not snooping.Snooping implies guilt. Implies I am doing something wrong. What I am doing is gathering information, and there is a difference, even if nobody would believe me if I said it out loud.It is Thursday morning. Derek left for work forty minutes ago. I called in a half day from the office, told my manager I had a dentist appointment, and sat at the kitchen table with my coffee going cold beside me and my husband's phone records pulled up on my laptop.Perks of being married to a man who uses the same password for everything. His birthday. October third. Even after two years I cannot decide if that is endearing or just lazy.I find the number in under ten minutes.Vivienne Callahan. Saved in his contacts as V. One letter. Cute.I scroll through the call log and my stomach does something ugly. Twice a week minimum. Sometimes more. The calls are never short. Forty minutes. An hour. Once, on a Wednesday night three weeks ago when Derek told me

What do I want?Nobody has asked me that in a very long time.Derek used to ask, in the beginning. What do you want for dinner, what do you want to do this weekend, where do you want to go for our anniversary. Small questions. The kind that feel like love when someone is asking them and feel like performance when you look back and realize they stopped somewhere around month eight and you did not even notice.I type back to Rhys: Can we meet?Three dots.When?Saturday. Somewhere public.There is a place called Archer's on Clement Street. Noon.I save the address. Then I put my phone down and lie back on the bed and stare at the ceiling and do something I have not let myself do in three weeks.I cryNot the ugly kind. Not the falling-apart kind. Just quiet tears running sideways into my hair while I breathe steadily and let myself feel the full weight of what this is. Two years. I gave this man two years of my life, my body, my loyalty, my future plans, the name I legally changed, the

Friday arrives the way all dangerous things do.Quietly.Derek is in a good mood at breakfast. Humming while he makes toast, refilling my coffee without being asked, kissing the top of my head on his way past like we are a couple in a commercial for something wholesome. He has no idea. Absolutely zero idea. And the contrast between what he thinks this morning is and what this morning actually is, is so sharp it almost makes me dizzy."Big dinner tonight," he says, sitting across from me. "Might run late.""That is fine," I say. "I will probably just have a bath and an early night.""You sure? I can try to wrap it up by nine."I look at him over my coffee cup. This man. This genuinely unbelievable man. Planning a considerate evening around a wife he has been lying to for two years."Take your time," I tell him warmly. "I will be here."He smiles and reaches over and squeezes my hand.I smile back.The moment he leaves I text Rhys one word.Today.His reply is immediate.Ready.I spend

I do not sleep much.Not because I am crying, not because I am falling apart, just because my brain refuses to switch off, cycling through everything on a loop like it is trying to make sure I have processed every single detail before it lets me rest.I lie there listening to the sounds of the apartment. Derek shifting on the couch at 2am. The refrigerator hum. A car passing outside. The particular silence of a home that has already ended even though nothing is packed yet.At six-fifteen I give up on sleep entirely.I shower. I dress. Dark jeans, white shirt, my good blazer. I do my makeup carefully, the full version, not because I care what Derek thinks but because armor takes different forms and today I want mine visible.I look at myself in the bathroom mirror for a moment.Good on paper."Not anymore," I tell my reflection.I walk out to the kitchen and start the coffee.Derek appears in the doorway ten minutes later, pillow crease still on his cheek, wearing yesterday's shirt. He