He crossed the room toward me.
I stepped back.
That stopped him more effectively than shouting would have.
His hand dropped.
“Where have you been?”
“Somewhere quiet.”
“Do you have any idea what you put me through last night?”
There it was.
Grant’s fear, translated almost instantly into accusation.
I looked at him.
“Yes.”
He blinked.
“What?”
“I think I do.”
He dragged a hand over his face.
“Fine.
I’m angry.
I’m also sorry.
I shouldn’t have said what I said.
It was stupid.
Bennett was joking.
I was joking back.”
“You weren’t talking to Bennett.”
Grant went still.
It was a tiny detail, but I had noticed it because I had spent years noticing everything about him.
The person on the phone had warned him that his wife might run off.
Grant had laughed because the possibility seemed absurd.
“That’s not the point,” he said.
“No.
It isn’t.”
“Then what is?”
I almost answered immediately.
Instead I walked to the hallway console and turned our honeymoon photograph upright.
The woman in the picture was laughing into the wind.
“The point is that you believed I would always be here.”
Grant’s expression hardened.
“You left our home in the middle of the night because I made one bad joke?”
“No.”
“Then tell me what this is.”
I opened my bag and removed the envelope.
His eyes dropped to it.
For the first time, he looked uncertain.
“What’s that?”
“Everything I was going to tell you before you told your friend you could replace me.”
I handed it to him.
Grant did not open it immediately.
“You planned this?”
“I planned to talk to you.”
“With a packed bag?”
“The bag came after.”
That answer seemed to unsettle him more.
Because there was no conspiracy for him to fight.
No secret lover.
No hidden scheme.
No dramatic betrayal he could use to make himself the injured party.
There had only been a wife sitting across from him at an anniversary dinner, waiting for him to notice her.
