And that single sentence severed the last thread of something I had not even known I was still holding.

Because his first words, walking into a room and finding his wife and his best friend on their feet in conflict, were not what happened? They were not are you all right, Valeria? They were what did you do to her — the instant, automatic assumption that in any collision between his wife and his friend, his wife was the aggressor and his friend the victim.

Seven days of marriage, months of engagement, years together, and that was the reflex beneath all of it, laid bare in five words.

I said nothing.

I pressed play.

And Chloe’s own voice rose out of the little speaker into the coffee shop: He married you because you’re stable… but that doesn’t mean you’re the person he can’t let go of.