You Had Five Minutes

We’re ready whenever you are. I read it twice, then looked up at the glass tower where my husband sat, still believing he had just won an argument.

Five minutes had almost passed.

He had no idea what was about to change.

I had not been idle in the years of my marriage, though Conrad believed I had.

That was the assumption that undid him, in the end — the assumption that a quiet wife is an empty one.

While he worked late and traveled with his assistant, I had read.