“Hannah—”

“No, it’s fine.

I said okay.”

And here is the thing I need to be honest about, because otherwise the rest of it reads as a woman with extraordinary composure, and that is not what I was.

I did not decide anything in that kitchen.

I was not clear-headed and I was not building a plan.

What happened is that a very old, very quiet suspicion — one I had been sitting on for about eleven weeks and had never once said out loud, not to Clara, not to anyone — came up through the floor and stood next to the birthday party, and the two of them together made a shape.

Because for three months, my husband had been coming home late on Tuesdays.