A woman who is surprised by betrayal trembles.

Her body floods with adrenaline, her hands shake, she has to sit down.

My hands were perfectly steady on that phone, steady enough to type a message, steady enough to set the phone down and wait — and that steadiness was not strength.

It was recognition.

Some part of me had already done all the trembling, privately, over months of small wrongnesses I had refused to add up, and by the time the proof arrived on that screen there was no shock left in my body to produce a tremor.

I had been grieving this marriage for a long time without permission to know it.