He Spent Two Years Mocking How Tired I Looked While I Paid Every Bill. He Never Mentioned Whose Name Was on the Mortgage

I did not know yet what I was afraid of.

That is the thing about the moment before you understand a betrayal: your body knows before your mind will let it.

All the way to the dry cleaner, with the children in the back and the radio on, I kept turning the two facts over — the dry cleaning we could not afford, the networking he had not done in two years — and feeling that cold thing tighten, and telling myself I was tired, I was imagining it, I was doing the very thing Trent always accused me of.

It would have been easier to keep telling myself that.