“That was in September,” she said. “I didn’t know who she was at first. Then I did.”

Emily never knocked. She sat in the car and then she drove away.

“After that I told him I was done being told she was fragile,” Claire said. “Because whatever that woman was, she wasn’t that.”

Then, in October, Emily started following him.

Claire knew because Daniel told her, and because he got frightened in a way she’d never seen, and the fear was not about Emily being hurt. It was about being caught.

He started talking about money, about the house, about what a divorce would take from him, and Claire — who had spent three years being told the marriage was already over — began to understand that she had been managed, precisely and professionally, for three years.