My husband’s mistress rang the doorbell, handed me her coat, and said, “Tell Stephen I’m here.”

She thought I was the maid.

In my own house.

For a few seconds, I stood there with her cream wool coat folded over my forearm, staring at a woman I had never seen before as she stepped across the threshold like she had a right to be there.

She did not look nervous.

She did not look guilty.

She looked inconvenienced.

She was young, maybe twenty-five, with glossy blonde hair, a tiny gold necklace at her throat, and a fitted ivory dress that probably cost more than my first car.

Her heels clicked against the marble in my foyer, sharp and certain, and her perfume floated behind her like a warning.

She glanced around the entryway and gave a small, disappointed sigh.

“This place needs a renovation,” she said.

“I’ll talk to Stephen.”

Stephen.

My husband.

The man I had been married to for twelve years.

The man whose last name I still wore.

The man whose framed medical school graduation photo sat on the console table beside a vase of tulips I had bought that morning.

She did not even notice the wedding portrait hanging beside the staircase.

In it, I was twenty-five, younger than she was now, with my face turned toward Stephen like he was the safest place in the world.

I tightened my fingers around her coat.

“Where is Stephen?” she asked, still not really looking at me.

“He’s not here.”

Her mouth tightened.

“When will he be back? I don’t have all day.”

There was something almost impressive about her entitlement.

She had not asked who I was.

She had not wondered why I answered the door.

She had simply placed me into the lowest position available in her imagination and moved on.

“Who are you?” I asked.

She turned slowly then, as if the question amused her.

“Amber,” she said.

“Stephen’s girlfriend.”

The word landed quietly, but it split something open inside me.

Girlfriend.

Not patient.

Not colleague.

Not confused visitor.

Girlfriend.

Amber tilted her head, studying my jeans, my old college sweatshirt, my bare face, my hair twisted into a clip because I had spent the morning cleaning out the pantry.

“And you’re the maid, apparently?”

Then she laughed.

Not cruelly enough to be dramatic.

Worse.

Casually.

Like I was furniture that had made an unexpected sound.

“Stephen usually has better-dressed staff,” she added.

“Are you new?”

I could have told her then.

I could have said my name.

I could have pointed to the wedding photo.

I could have asked her to leave my house before I said something I could not take back.

Instead, I felt something cold and clear settle over me.

“I’ve been here twelve years,” I said.

Amber rolled her eyes.

“The help always exaggerates.

Tell Stephen I’m waiting.

I’ll be in the living room.”

And she walked past me.

Into my living room.

She chose the gray sofa Stephen and I had argued about for three weeks because he wanted leather and I wanted something softer.

She sat down as if posing for a lifestyle magazine and crossed one bare leg over the other.

Then she lifted both heels and placed them on my coffee table.

That table had been