PART 1

“Dad, are you coming tomorrow?

I have a fever and I want you to hug me.”

It was 1:17 a.m. when I heard those words coming from the stairs of my own house.

My husband, Kenneth, was sitting on the sofa, video calling a child of about four years old.

Next to him, on the glowing screen, an unknown woman was gently stroking the boy’s forehead.

“Of course I’m going, champ,” Kenneth replied with a deep tenderness that I had been missing for many long months.

My name is Giselle, I am thirty-nine years old, and I live in Phoenix.

That night we were supposed to be celebrating eleven years of marriage.

I had prepared his favorite roasted lasagna, he had brought me white roses, and for the first time in weeks, he had actually agreed to stay the night with me.

I say “agreed” because for the last three months, right after we were intimate, Kenneth would always get up with his pillow and head downstairs to the living room couch.

First he blamed the firmness of the mattress, then he complained about the air conditioning draft, and finally he claimed that I moved too much in my sleep.

I had even started going to bed holding my breath so I would not disturb him, secretly convinced that he no longer found me attractive.

Our marriage carried a painful wound that I thought I knew completely, since we had tragically lost two pregnancies over the years.

After the second loss, the doctor ordered extensive tests for both of us, and while I submitted to every single painful procedure, Kenneth always managed to find a last-minute meeting or a work trip that prevented him from getting tested.

Meanwhile, his mother, Mrs.

Gertrude, had gradually gone from comforting me to repeating that a house without children was fundamentally incomplete.

I had spent three years caring for her every need because her bad knees made it impossible for her to live alone.