Those words came out of my mouth so calmly, so casually, like I was asking about the weather or what he wanted for dinner. But the moment they hit the air between us, I watched my husband’s face drain of color. His laptop bag slipped from his shoulder and crashed onto our hardwood floor. His hand went to his throat like he couldn’t breathe.
“What?”

The word came out strangled, barely a whisper.
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I kept my voice steady, clinical.
“Hazel. The illness. I’m assuming she told you, given how much time you spent together in Key West these past fifteen days.”
Milo wasn’t in Miami for business like he told me. He was in Key West with the woman he called his work wife. And I’d spent the entire fifteen days he was gone gathering proof—credit card statements, Instagram photos, text messages he thought he’d deleted. I knew about the couples’ massages, the romantic dinners, the secret apartment they’d leased together. I knew everything, but he didn’t know that I knew.
Not yet.

And this question, this simple, terrifying question about a non-existent illness, was just the opening move. The thing that would make him panic, make him run to a clinic imagining the worst, make him feel a fraction of the fear I’d lived with for eight days.
There was no illness. Hazel was perfectly healthy. But Milo didn’t need to know that.