Chapter 1 — The Squeak in the Floor

While I was pinned in polite conversation at the head of a table full of my husband’s relatives, Warner slipped upstairs with the woman he’d loved before me.

I saw it happen.

I nodded, I smiled, I sipped my water, and I let him go.

Three minutes later, I reached for the remote, and I turned on the living room’s projector.

What filled the screen was not what he feared.

It was worse, because it could not be argued with.

It was a Tuesday, and the dining room was thick with the smell of roasted beef and the heavier weight of a family congratulating itself.

My mother-in-law, Adelina, held court at the head of the long table, a glass of dark wine tilting in her fingers as she named her son the finest man in the city.

And right then, faint over the clink of silver and the laughter of cousins, I heard the floor creak above us.

Almost no one else registered it.

I heard it because three minutes earlier I had watched Warner Crandall invent a thin excuse about choosing a wine from the cellar and slip up the carpeted stairs, and because thirty seconds after that his honored guest, Renae Fenmore, had set down her fork, murmured something about the powder room, and followed him up.

The click of the master bedroom door, faint as it was, landed on my ear like a deadbolt sliding home on an eight-year marriage.

Chapter 2 — The Performance

I sat anchored at the center of the table, my fingers around a glass of room-temperature water, a practiced smile arranged on my face.

“Our Warner has always been the gold standard of a family man,” Adelina announced, flushed with wine and maternal pride, sweeping a hand toward the relatives.

“The very moment his firm secured this contract, what did he do?

He insisted on treating everyone to dinner.