Then a Saturday in August when she had helped him pick out a gift — for me, as it happens, for my birthday — and they had driven forty minutes to a mall to do it.

Then a motel in October, and after that, roughly twice a month.

He had told her that our marriage was over in everything but paperwork.

He had told her that we hadn’t been together in two years, which was a lie, and one I made him say out loud in front of his parents, which was the single cruelest thing I did that entire year and which I do not regret.

He had told her that he was going to leave when Sam started second grade, because it would be easier on the kids.