The line that cut deepest was near the end of the report, in the investigator’s flat professional prose: the subject repeatedly assured the young woman that his marriage was already over and that the two of them would be starting a new life together soon.

Already over.

I read that line, sitting on the hardwood floor of my studio, and for twenty minutes I cried among the fabric swatches and the blueprints — the business I had built with my own two hands, the one part of my life no one had lied me into.

Then I got up, washed my face, and called my sister.

It was not the affair that put me on the floor.

I had braced for the affair; the flight confirmation had already told me that much.