The perfume on my husband’s shirt was only the first sign. Then a pregnant stranger came to my door and calmly asked me to give up my house. I let her keep talking for one reason.
My husband’s shirt smelled like a woman who was not me.
I stood in the laundry room with Tyler’s collar lifted close to my face. The scent was sharp, floral, and completely unfamiliar. I lowered the shirt into the basket as carefully as if it might wake.
The house around me was silent.
Eighteen years of mornings in that kitchen. The same wooden table where our two kids used to eat cereal before school. The same low hum of the refrigerator.
Our children were in college now. The silence had become its own kind of company.
Tyler had left before sunrise again. He was leaving earlier each morning and coming home later every night.
“It’s just a busy quarter,” he had told me the night before, kicking off his shoes without looking at me.
“You’ve been saying that for months,” I said gently.
“Because it’s been busy for months, Debra. Please.”
I let it drop. I always let things drop.
That week, the phone had rung twice with no one on the line. A credit card statement showed a charge at a downtown steakhouse I had never entered.
“Just a work dinner,” Tyler muttered when I asked. “I forgot to tell you.”
“You usually tell me.”
“I forgot.”
