one of the first things Stephen and I bought together.

We found it at an estate sale when we were newly married and broke enough to count gas money.

It was scratched, ugly, and solid.

We spent a Sunday sanding it in the garage while it rained outside, laughing because neither of us knew what we were doing.

Now his mistress was resting her shoes on it.

“Could you bring me some water?” she called without turning around.

“With lemon.

Not too much ice.”

I looked at her coat on my arm.

Then I looked at the wedding photo.

Then I walked into the kitchen.

My hands did not shake.

That surprised me.

I took a glass from the cabinet, filled it with water, added no lemon, and packed it so full of ice that cubes rose above the rim.

When I returned, Amber took it from me and frowned.

“This is too much ice.”

“Is it?”

She sighed.

“Is Stephen training you? Because this isn’t how he likes things done.”

I sat in the armchair across from her.

Her eyes flicked toward me, irritated.

Apparently maids were not supposed to sit.

“How does Stephen like things done?” I asked.

“Properly,” she said.

“Efficiently.

With respect for his guests.”

Guests.

The word had edges.

“Do you come here often?”

Amber smiled as if I had finally asked something useful.

“Every Tuesday and Thursday when his wife is working.

Sometimes Saturdays when she’s at her book club.”

I felt the first real crack of anger then.

Not because she was in my house.

Not even because she had called herself his girlfriend.

But because Stephen had built a whole schedule out of my life.

He had turned my routine into an opportunity.

He had used my discipline, my work, my predictability, as cover for his betrayal.

Except he had miscalculated.

Two months earlier, I had changed my schedule.

I had started working from home on Tuesdays and Thursdays because my company was preparing for a major expansion and I needed quiet time away from the office.

Stephen had been too distracted, too self-absorbed, or too uninterested to notice.

And I had no book club.

I had never had a book club.

“You seem to know a lot about his wife,” I said.

Amber laughed and leaned back.

“I know enough.

Older.

Boring.

Letting herself go.”

I felt my fingers curl against the arm of the chair.

“Stephen says she trapped him young,” Amber continued.

“Before he knew better.

Now he’s stuck with her.

He says it all the time.

It’s cheaper to keep her than to get a divorce.”

My breath moved slowly in and out of my chest.

Cheaper to keep her.

That was what my marriage had become in his mouth.

A calculation.

An expense.

A problem he had not yet found a profitable way to discard.

Amber took a sip of water and made a face at the ice.

“He deserves better,” she said.

“Someone young.

Beautiful.

Someone who understands what a man like him needs.

Not some frumpy housewife who probably thinks missionary is an adventure.”

The insult was so vulgar, so childish, that for one ridiculous second I almost smiled.

I was thirty-seven.

I had laugh lines because I had laughed.

I had tired eyes because