Chapter 4

At 3:55 PM, I sat in my car in the parking lot outside Dr. Vance's office building, watching the rain stream across the windshield.

At 3:58 PM, my phone buzzed in my lap.

Ethan: Maren's client meeting went completely sideways. She's spiraling and having a massive panic attack at her studio downtown. I have to go get her. We'll have to reschedule with Vance.

I stared at the screen, the cold air from the dashboard vents blowing over my hands.

I typed back: I am asking you to show up to your own marriage.

His reply came back ten seconds later: Why does every single thing have to be a test with you?

I looked at his words, my thumb resting on the glass.

It isn't a test, Ethan, I typed back slowly. You just keep giving me your answer.

I turned off my phone, stepped out into the rain, and walked into Dr. Vance's office alone.

The counseling room was warm, filled with soft leather armchairs and the quiet ticking of a clock on the bookshelf.

Dr. Vance, a woman in her late fifties with calm, observant eyes, listened without interrupting as I laid out the past month—not with tears, but with the precise, methodical facts of a medical report.

When I finished, she sat back, her hands folded in her lap.

"Nora," she asked softly. "If Ethan were sitting in that chair right now, what would safety in your marriage look like to you?"

I looked out the window at the rain falling over the streetlights.

"Not having to constantly prove that I belong in it," I answered.

When I walked through our front door at seven-thirty, the house was dark except for the kitchen overheads.

Ethan was standing by the counter, zipping up his rain jacket and grabbing his car keys.

"I have to go back to Oakridge High," Ethan said quickly, his eyes darting to the wall clock. "The department head called a last-minute curriculum meeting for the AP History teachers. I'll be late."

He walked toward the door, pausing three feet away from me.

"Look, about this afternoon—Maren was genuinely hyperventilating. She was panicking. I couldn't leave her alone."

"No," I said quietly, looking at his face in the hallway light. "I want you to stop making me compete for a position that was already mine."

Ethan's eyes flashed with anger. "You don't need anyone, Nora. That's the difference. Maren does."

The words hung between us in the cold air, sharp and unyielding.

"I didn't need anyone until I married you, Ethan," I said, my voice barely above a whisper. "I thought I had a husband."

Ethan slammed the front door shut behind him.

I opened my phone and found Karen's number. My thumb hovered over the screen for a moment before I typed: Is Ethan's AP curriculum meeting still happening tonight?

Her answer came almost immediately.

No meeting tonight. The department head cancelled it this morning. Why?

He was not at school. He was telling me an active, deliberate lie.

There was no meeting.

He was not at school.

I put on my raincoat and picked up my keys.

Tonight, I was done asking him for the truth.

I was going to see it.