Chapter 2

Winnie was acting really out of character.

I used to always trail behind her, begging for her attention, never really paying any mind to what she was doing. But today, I noticed that every afternoon at exactly three, she'd set down her magazine and sneak a glance at the wall clock.

At three-oh-five, she walked into the study and locked the door behind her.

I caught the faint sound of a mouse click, then the steady rhythm of keys tapping. She was entering a password.

My heart was racing, and I could feel the veins in my temples pulsing. What was she hiding from me? Was it the secret that made her so dead set on divorcing me?

The next day, or the eleventh loop, to be exact, I hid a mini spy camera in the gap between the books on the study shelf. I'd gone to the electronics market last loop to buy it.

At three in the afternoon, I pretended I couldn't stand the suffocating atmosphere at home and slammed the door as I stormed out.

In reality, I was hiding at the end of the hallway in the fire escape, hands trembling as I opened the live feed on my phone.

The image was a bit blurry, but I could still make out Winnie sitting in front of the computer. She sat up straight, like she was performing some kind of sacred ritual.

Her slender fingers flew over the keyboard, typing out a string of characters: [K-L-0-7-1-5].

I stared at the screen, my fingertips digging into the phone case so hard I left white marks.

The screen lit up, and an encrypted file popped open. Winnie stared at it, and for a split second, her icy expression melted. There was even a hint of heartbreaking longing in her eyes.

I stood there, completely paralyzed, feeling like every drop of blood in my body had frozen solid.

My initials were ZG. So who was KL?

*****

By the twentieth loop, I had all the passwords memorized. During the hour Winnie went out to clear her head, I sat down at her computer.

My hands were shaking, and the mouse felt like it weighed a ton. When I typed in that cursed string: KL0715, I could barely breathe.

There was only one file in the folder, titled: [Love Memoir for Zack.]

I clicked it open, and my pupils contracted in shock.

Inside, it was filled with meticulous notes about our past.

[May 20th. Zack confessed his love to me on the rooftop. He was wearing a white shirt. He looked a bit silly, but I had to pretend to be really moved. Remember to hug him and lean my head against his left shoulder.]

[August 12th. Zack made sunny-side-up eggs for the first time. They reeked of raw egg, but I have to finish everything and tell him it's the best breakfast I've ever tasted.

[That way, he'll keep making them, and I won't have to worry about breakfast anymore.]

[Note: Zack has a dimple on his left cheek when he smiles, just like KL. I should focus on his left cheek more, so I can hold on a bit longer.]

My stomach twisted painfully, acid rising in my throat. All those precious, unforgettable moments of our love were laid out here, reduced to step-by-step acting cues, timed down to the second.

I scrolled like a madman, the sound of my fingers swiping across the screen cutting through the silence of the room.

Every entry was basically a manual on how to play the part of a loving wife. Winnie wrote down my likes, how to deal with my moods, and even how many seconds to keep her eyes closed when we kissed.

And at the bottom of every page, the same line kept repeating, like some hopeless mantra: [Zack is so good. I have to try to love him. I have to forget Kevin.]

Kevin. Kevin Ludwig. KL.

I slumped into the chair, feeling like all the air had been sucked out of the room. I remembered our wedding day, how Winnie cried her eyes out. I thought it was happiness, but now I realize it wasn't. Maybe it was the despair of realizing she could never truly love me.

It turned out that for the past three years, I'd been living in a huge, gentle trap Winnie had woven for me. The woman I loved so much. The first thing she did every morning was go over her script on how to love me.

And me? I was a stand-in for a dead man. A prop that looked a little like him, easy to use.