An affair is a thing people fall into; it is weak and selfish and human, and people do it because they want something and take it without counting the cost.

What the camera showed me was not weakness.

It was calculation.

Valentina had not been swept away by passion into my husband’s arms.

She had been working — methodically, over months, with a key she’d had made, coming and going from my home when I was gone, carrying out my grandmother’s jewelry and my financial folders like a professional clearing a job.

The affair was the cover story.