“Stand there like some wounded saint while everyone else has to manage the mess you create.”

Evan made a small sound.

“The mess he creates?”

Claire ignored him.

“You come home early without telling me. You open doors without knocking. You grab mail that isn’t yours to handle. Then you act shocked when things are complicated.”

I almost answered.

Then I stopped.

Because something in her wording caught me.

Mail that isn’t yours to handle.

Not our mail.

Not the mail.

Mine to handle.

I looked down at the envelope.

It was addressed to both of us.

Mason A. Reed and Claire L. Reed.

But Claire had spoken like she was the only person with permission to touch it.

That was when I realized she didn’t simply want the house.

She’d already started living as if she had it.

The thought opened up other memories I’d ignored, because marriage teaches you to explain away small things.

The bank statement she took from my hand before I could see the second page.

The password reset email from our mortgage account that disappeared from my inbox.

The afternoon she asked me to sign “insurance updates” while I was on a conference call, then got angry when I said I’d read them later.

The weekend she insisted we host dinner for a man named “Dan from the county,” then canceled when I said I’d be home.

Dan.

My stomach tightened.

Dan from the county.

I looked up at Claire.

“Was his name Dan?”

Her face froze.

It was almost nothing.

A pause. A breath.

But I saw it.

Evan saw it too.

“Yes,” he said slowly. “Daniel something.”

The kitchen felt suddenly too bright.

Our recessed lights hummed overhead, shining down on the granite counters Claire had picked out six months earlier—counters I’d paid for by taking the exact trips she later used as evidence of my absence.

“Daniel who?” I asked.

Claire said, “Enough.”

I reached for my phone.

She moved immediately.

Not toward me, but toward the hallway.

That was worse.

She wasn’t trying to stop me from calling someone.

She was trying to get to something before I did.

I followed.

“Mason,” she said sharply.

But I was already moving past the laundry room toward the small office at the front of the house.