The Locked Room at the Top of the Stairs

It started feeling like a place where things were hidden.

I have wondered, since, what would have happened if I had walked into that laundry room and simply turned around, marched back up the stairs, and demanded to know why my wedding sheets were in the dryer at dawn.

Probably nothing good.

Probably Victoria would have produced some smooth explanation — a spilled glass, a bit of makeup, some small tidy lie delivered with a laugh — and I would have been made to feel hysterical for asking, and the wall between Julian and me would have gone up one row higher.

That is how it works, with someone like her.

Every direct question gets you a reasonable answer and a faint sense that you are the unreasonable one, until you learn to stop asking, until you train yourself out of your own perceptions.