Ivan and Renata, stepping out of the Cabo villa into the sun.

Not an executive and his consultant.

Not colleagues.

A couple, relaxed and unhurried and entirely at home in a life I had paid for the credibility of, without ever being invited into it.

I sat with those photographs longer than I needed to, not because they hurt — though they did — but because I was looking for the moment our marriage had become a set for a play I wasn’t cast in.

There was Renata in a dress I’d never seen, laughing at something on the villa steps, and there was Ivan behind her with his hand at the small of her back, the exact gesture he’d used introducing her to me across a dinner table as his business partner.