For one second, something changed in his eyes.
Not surprise.
Calculation.
Then it disappeared.
“You’ve barely slept,” he said. “Elio is adjusting badly, and now you’re building a story from something he imagined.”
“Who was the woman?”
“There was no woman.”
“He described an envelope.”
Keaton gave a sharp laugh.
“Are you questioning me based on the testimony of a kindergartener?”
“Don’t speak about him like that.”
The baby began crying upstairs.
Keaton picked up the bottle.
“We are not doing this while you’re exhausted and emotional.”
He walked past me before I could stop him.
For two days, I tried to believe him.
That is the humiliating part. I wanted my husband’s lie to be true because the alternative was too terrible to hold.
But Elio would not enter the nursery.
Keaton kept his phone with him constantly.
On the third night, I woke at 2:17 and found his side of the bed empty.
