After three years of working away from home, my husband came back with a strange new habit: every night, he wrapped his arms around my waist from behind, something he had never done before. I asked him, “Who taught you to sleep like that?” He sighed and replied, “If you pretend you don’t know, you can keep being my wife.” I didn’t argue. The next day, I called my lawyer because I already had proof of what he had been doing for those three years.

“If you pretend you don’t know anything, you can keep being my wife.”

Christopher said it in the dark.

Calmly.

Almost lazily.

As if he were offering me a favor.

I lay still beside him.

His arm had been wrapped around my waist from nb behind.

That was how he had slept every night since coming home.

It was a habit he had never had before.

Not once in the twelve years we had been together.

So that night, I finally asked.

“Who taught you to sleep like that?”

His arm slipped away immediately.

For several seconds, he said nothing.

Then he sat up.

Walked toward the balcony.

Opened the glass door.

And lit a cigarette.

Christopher had quit smoking five years earlier.

Apparently, three years away had given him more than one new habit.

My name is Lorelei Hayes.

I was thirty-six years old.

And until that night, I had spent three years waiting for my husband to come home.

Christopher had been overseeing the South American expansion of Pinnacle Crest Group.

The assignment was supposed to last fourteen months.

Then eighteen.

Then two years.

Then nearly three.

He came home occasionally.