He said, ‘If Chloe finds out about this, we’re both finished.'”

My own name, in my daughter’s mouth, repeating a sentence my husband had spoken in a locked room behind my back.

I felt the warm tropical afternoon go strange and distant around me, as though I were hearing it from the far end of a long hallway.

“Then Daddy put the lock back on the box,” Lily went on, “and he told me it was a special birthday surprise game.

For you.