Chapter 1

The day before my wife's surgery, I was away on a business trip, and every ticket home was sold out.

I was frantic, and a coworker who couldn't stand watching me stew booked me a rideshare instead.

The driver who accepted the ride was the very person who was supposed to be lying in a hospital bed. My wife, Arlene Jenner.

And in the passenger seat next to her sat an intern from her company.

Without so much as turning her head, Arlene said to me, "Sir, you booked the three-person private ride. The guy up front here is my husband, so he doesn't count toward the headcount."

"I won't pick up anyone else on the way, I'll take you straight home. We'll split the tolls fifty-fifty, that works, right?"

I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

The whole drive, the two of them flirted.

As we neared the last rest stop, they got to talking about Arlene's birthday.

Arlene laughed and said, "So we wouldn't get interrupted, our little world just the two of us, I told Roland Henson I was having surgery."

"And just to be safe, I went ahead and bought up every ticket. He wants to come home? He'd have to walk."

I quietly clenched my fist and spoke up.

"Open the door. I'm getting out."

...

This SUV of Arlene's is mine.

To be exact, it's the wedding car I paid for in full back when I married her.

But in five whole years of marriage, this was the first time I'd ever sat inside it.

Every time I wanted to use the car, or wanted her to come get me on a rainy day,

Arlene would refuse, looking put-upon. "Honey, I have a serious thing about my space. I don't like other people in my car, you'd mess up my private space, you understand, right?"

Back then I felt sorry for her, all that pressure at work, and I made allowances for her quirk.

Three years, day in and day out, rain or shine, I packed onto the subway and handed the car over to her completely.

But only now do I see clearly what's in this so-called private space of hers.

On the center console sat cologne and cigarettes.

On the back seat lay a gym towel.

And on top of the armrest box, a jumbled pile of empty snack boxes.

Some thing about her space. Some not liking other people in her car.

Turns out her passenger seat had long since been taken by another man.

I looked toward the front.

The one sitting shotgun was William James, an intern who'd only recently been made permanent at Arlene's company.

In the group team-building photo Arlene had posted, he'd been standing there in the back row, all sunshine.

I'd noticed him right away and even said he looked sharp.

What had Arlene said back then?

She'd curled her lip, careless about it. "Him? His head isn't in the work at all. I give him a month before he gets pushed out."

Arlene is an industry elite, hard on everyone, herself included.

The reason we ended up together was that I was smart and driven, that I met her standards for a husband.

She praised me all the time, said I was level-headed and clear-thinking, good at my job, that the two of us were a perfect match.

After we married, she was always demanding I stay independent, that I not cling to her.

When I hit trouble at work, she told me to figure it out myself.

When my mother fell ill and I fell apart, she scolded me coldly, said a grown man dumping his negative energy on his partner, what kind of thing was that?

When I forwarded her a Christmas video, wanting to take her out on a date, all she did was frown and say it was all a trap set by capital.

Even when I bought a few beers, she'd say I was chasing indulgence, held hostage by consumerism.

Of course, we'd never once spent a single holiday together.

Now I watched her switch on autopilot, fish a bag of beef jerky out of the snack box, tear it open, and hold it up to William's mouth.

"Open up. Your favorite."

William leaned over and bit down on the jerky, then kissed her fingers while he was at it.

Arlene flicked his nose. "Dummy."

"Eat slower, don't get grease on your pants. I'm not washing them for you again tonight."

I watched the two of them, and my stomach churned.

I thought about the day I had a cold and accidentally spilled a little porridge on myself.

The look Arlene gave me was pure, undisguised disgust.

"A grown man, and you can't even hold onto a bowl?"

"Clean it yourself. Don't count on me to fix it for you."

I'd thought she was just cold by nature, that she didn't know how to take care of anyone.

But it turns out she can peel open a snack wrapper for someone too, can talk to someone in that coaxing, cutesy voice too.

I stared hard at the back of her head, and it still felt too absurd to believe.

How could she be cheating on me?