I woke at 2 AM and reached for him out of habit. His side of the bed was cold. Not empty-cold. Gone-for-hours cold. I lay there staring at the ceiling of our penthouse, listening to rain slap the glass in long, uneven sheets, and I noticed the thing I'd been training myself not to notice. Perfume. Not mine. Something warm and floral, the kind that only sinks into a man's collar after hours of skin against skin. It was woven into the cotton beside me, deep enough that it hadn't faded yet. I didn't cry. I'd stopped crying somewhere around the third month of feeling like a ghost in my own marriage. His phone sat on the nightstand, screen still glowing. Adrian never left it unlocked. He'd left in a hurry, then. One thread sat open at the top. Vanessa Cole. The last message, sent at 11:52 PM: Landed. Terminal B. Come get me. I set the phone down at the exact same angle I'd found it. Then I walked to his study and pulled up the building's garage log on his tablet. Adrian Voss. 11:47 PM. Out — board emergency, Westline office. The airport is east. The Westline office is west. A man cannot be in two directions at once. But a liar can write whichever one he needs. I went back to bed. I lay in the dark with my eyes open and his lie still warm beside me, and I did not sleep. In the morning he was back. Showered, perfect, moving through our bedroom with the ease of a man who has never once been questioned. He kissed the top of my head and told me the board meeting ran late. He told me to take my supplements before breakfast. The ones my new doctor prescribed. The ones Vanessa's clinic compounded special, because my "anxiety" had gotten so bad. "I'll take them in a minute," I said. He nodded and went down to the kitchen. I waited until I heard the espresso machine. Then I opened the supplement case I'd swallowed from every morning for eight months. The powder inside the capsule was pale. White. I twisted one open over the marble counter and stared at it, trying to remember what it used to look like. Faintly gold. There'd been a warm amber tint once. This had no color. Only a chemical bitterness that sat at the back of my throat before I'd even touched it. I sealed the capsule in a plastic bag, tucked it inside the locked jewelry box under the sink, and went downstairs to have breakfast with my husband. He smiled at me over his coffee like I was the most precious thing he owned. I smiled back. And somewhere between 2 AM and the pale powder on the counter, I made my first decision in eight months. I picked up a pen, and I started a list.
