He had told Yvette our marriage was already dead — that I was cold, and distant, and checked-out, that he was lonely in a loveless house — the whole tired script a cheating man recites to make his betrayal sound like grief.

And he had used my long twelve-hour night shifts as the cover of darkness under which to build an entire second life inside my own home.

Whenever Yvette came, he had a routine for Roger: walk him down to the kitchen or the living room, tell him it was a special game, that he had to stay quiet and wait there until Daddy came back down.

My little boy had spent who knew how many nights on that couch and that floor, in the dark, holding his elephant, waiting for a father who had shut a door and forgotten he existed.