Chapter 1
Sarah Floyd's husband, Paul Floyd, was the kind of man everyone called the perfect husband.
In three years of marriage, he never forgot a single anniversary. He peeled every shrimp for her without being asked.
Every night, he came home at exactly 9:30 PM, never a minute early, never a minute late, like someone had programmed him that way.
Her friends envied her for marrying the love of her life. But only Sarah knew there was something deeply unsettling hiding underneath all that perfection.
Paul never let her enter his studio. Sometimes, she caught the scent of a woman's perfume on him, a soft, sweet smell that didn't belong in their home.
The worst part was that it was the exact perfume her late sister, Jocelyn Row, used to love.
Then one day, an anonymous package showed up at her door. Inside was a voice recorder.
Sarah pressed play. Paul's gentle voice came through first, warm and familiar. Then came another woman's laughter, soft and charming.
That woman's voice sounded exactly like Sarah's.
*****
At exactly 9:30 PM, the entryway light switched on.
The timing was so precise that it almost felt calculated. Warm light spilled softly across the rug by Sarah Floyd's feet.
A second later, Paul Floyd stepped through the door. The bottom of his trench coat still carried the chill from outside, but everything about him looked flawless as always.
His hair was neatly combed back, not a single strand out of place from the night wind.
"I'm home," he said. Even his tone sounded identical to every other night over the past thousand days.
He changed his shoes, then placed his briefcase on the shoe cabinet, perfectly lined up with the edge.
After that, he walked over to Sarah, leaned down, and kissed her forehead. Even the warmth of the kiss felt perfectly measured.
Everything about him looked rehearsed, like a carefully staged performance, and Paul was the perfect lead actor.
Sarah leaned against the sofa and didn't get up to greet him like she usually did. She only lifted her eyes and quietly watched him remove his coat.
His movements were smooth and elegant. The expensive Patek Philippe watch on his wrist reflected a cold glint beneath the crystal chandelier.
"What's wrong?" Paul asked as he sat beside her. "Why are you so quiet tonight?" He reached over, about to pull her into his arms.
Sarah's body stiffened instinctively for half a second before she forced herself to relax and let him hold her.
There was a familiar, clean, woody scent on him with a faint trace of sweetness.
It was that perfume again, the one Jocelyn used to wear before she died.
"Nothing," Sarah said softly. "I'm just tired."
The feeling had been getting stronger all week.
Three days ago, she had found a pearl earring buried between the couch cushions. It wasn't hers. The style looked old-fashioned, nothing she would ever wear.
Two days ago, while sorting Paul's suits before sending them to the dry cleaner, she had found a ticket stub inside one of the pockets. It was for the "Monet and the Impressionists" art exhibit.
Now the ticket stub sat beneath a magazine on the coffee table.
"When I went to the dry cleaner today, I found this in your suit," Sarah said casually as she picked it up.
Her fingertips had already turned pale from gripping it too tightly. "Was it some company event? You never mentioned it."
Paul glanced at the ticket stub. Not a flicker of emotion crossed his face. He smiled calmly, the curve of his eyes so perfect that it almost looked drawn by hand.
"Oh, yeah. The company handed them out during team building last week," he said. "You know I'm not really into art. I never got around to using it, so I just stuffed it in my pocket and forgot about it."
He reached over and gently tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. His voice carried a soft, affectionate scolding. "You're overthinking again. It's just a ticket stub."
Sarah lowered her eyes and smiled faintly back at him. "Really? That's too bad then."
She didn't ask anything else.
But yesterday afternoon, she had already entered the unique ticket code into the museum's official website using her laptop.
The result on the screen shattered every excuse she had tried to make for him.
[Couple's Double Ticket. Redemption Time: Wednesday 2:32 PM]
That same afternoon, Paul had told her he was stuck in a four-hour international video conference.
Night settled over the house. In the bedroom, the only sounds left were the faint hiss of the humidifier and Paul's slow, steady breathing.
He slept peacefully. Moonlight fell across his handsome face, making him look like a flawless sculpture.
Sarah slowly sat up in bed, moving inch by inch as carefully as a cat. She climbed out barefoot, and the icy marble floor made her toes curl.
She walked around to Paul's side of the bed and looked down at him quietly.
Then she picked up the phone charging on the nightstand. After that, she carefully lifted his left hand.
She had played with his fingers countless times before. But tonight, touching them felt like touching a sleeping snake.
The phone unlocked silently beneath his fingerprint.
Sarah's heartbeat thundered inside the quiet room, almost hurting her ears.
She opened the photo album. It was empty.
Taking a slow breath, she tapped into the recently deleted folder with trembling fingers.
There was only one photo.
Behind them was the museum's famous wall covered with Monet's Water Lilies.
Paul stood in front of the painting with one arm wrapped tightly around a woman's waist. The woman looked exactly like Sarah.
They had the same face and hairstyle. She was even wearing Sarah's favorite champagne-colored dress.
But her smile was different. It was sweeter and softer. It was almost as if she were eager to please, something Sarah herself had never been.
At the bottom right corner of the photo was a line of text added by software in a cold, default system font. [Prototype Number 3, Emotional Module Test Successful.]