A mortgage we’d nearly finished paying.
Morning coffee we still, after all that time, drank together at the same small table.
I had thought we were solid.
I had genuinely thought we were the couple who told each other things.
And that was the detail that hurt most in that moment, standing there — not the woman, but the stickers. Because stickers meant a system.
Stickers meant this had happened enough times that a routine had formed, that my son had been coached, gently, into keeping a secret from me, that there was a whole arrangement running underneath my ordinary Thursdays that I had never once suspected.