That is sadder than a simple villain would have been.

But it is the truth, and the truth is the thing I decided to keep.

Chapter 4 — The Agency

The next morning, after I dropped Anwen at school, I drove downtown to a small private investigations office and set a retainer check on the desk.

“I need to know who my husband is traveling with,” I said, “and how long it’s been going on.” The investigator, a calm woman who had plainly heard this sentence many times, didn’t blink.

She asked a few quiet questions, wrote down a few things, and told me these matters usually took a week.