My sister kissed my husband in front of thirty people at her own anniversary party and called it a joke. Her husband had a wrapped present in his hands and an envelope she had never opened.

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PART 4 — THE FEBRUARY

And here is mine.

Bram rang me in the February.

He did not accuse anybody of anything. He asked me whether I thought Sasha had been odd with him lately, and whether I had noticed anything at Christmas, and he asked it twice in slightly different ways.

And I said no.

I said she was probably tired, and that the first year is hard, and then I said the thing I have not been able to put down since.

I said, “Bram, I think you’re being a bit unfair on her.”

Eight months.

He found it in the January. Not by investigating — her phone was signed in to the tablet they keep in the kitchen, and a photo album synced across, and that was that. The most ordinary thing in the world.