I stared at him. I was sure, for a moment, that I had misheard — that exhaustion had bent the words into something they couldn’t possibly be.

“Grant cheated on me,” I said. “For months. He admitted he brought her into our house — into our bed — while the kids were staying here with you last month.”

He flinched. Not at the content of it. At the volume. He glanced past me toward the street, checking whether the neighbors were out.

“You’re upset, and that’s understandable. But nobody makes good decisions about a marriage in the middle of a crisis. Ending it overnight, like this — that’s not sensible.”

Chapter 2 — Everyone Chose His Side

Behind him, my brother Trevor drifted into the hallway. Thirty-two years old, basketball shorts, headphones around his neck.

Trevor had lived in my parents’ finished basement for six years without paying a dollar of rent — a bedroom, a private bathroom, a foldout couch, an arrangement everyone had long since stopped calling temporary.

“There’s really not a lot of space down there anymore,” he said, and he actually looked at my three children while he said it.

“Especially with three little kids making noise all day.”

That landed harder than my father’s careful speech, because Trevor glanced at the suitcase in Sadie’s hands and smiled — a small, private smile, the smile of a person enjoying a show.

Then my sister Brooke appeared at his shoulder in a pressed linen dress. Brooke had been married eleven months and had recently begun speaking about marriage the way people speak about a subject they’ve just discovered and assume no one else has considered.

“Leaving overnight seems really impulsive, Lauren. Kids need stability. They need that more than their mom needs to feel validated right this second.”

Maisie’s fox slipped out from under her arm and dropped onto the porch boards.