I said I would be on my best behavior.

It was, I suppose, the last lie I ever told him, and I told it looking right into his eyes in our bedroom mirror, and he believed it completely, because he had spent three years training me to be believable in exactly that register.

He had no idea he was looking at the woman who owned his company.

He saw only the wife he’d built.

That was the last time he would ever make that mistake.

I picked up an untouched glass of sparkling water from the table I’d stumbled into.