I married my best friend — before our fifth wedding anniversary, I accidentally overheard him say: "My plan is about to work.

Matthew had made pasta.

He was standing at the stove when I came in, and he turned and smiled — that same smile, the one I had known since we were seven years old — and said, "Perfect timing.

Five more minutes."

I set my bag down.

I took off my coat.

I hung it on the hook by the door the way I always did.

"How was your day?" he said.

"Fine," I said.

"Quiet."

He handed me a glass of wine and clinked his against it and I drank and tasted nothing.

We sat at the table we had picked out together at a market three years ago.

We ate off the plates we had registered for at our wedding.

He told me about a meeting he'd had, something about a client, something about a contract, and I nodded in the right places and asked a short question when the silence ran a beat too long.

He was a good liar.

He had always been a good liar.

I understood now that I had simply never had a reason to look for it.

"You seem tired," he said.

"Long day," I said.

"You should have stayed home." He reached across the table and covered my hand with his.

"I keep telling you, you work too hard."

His hand was warm.

It was the same hand that had held mine at the altar.

The same hand that had signed documents in my name without my knowledge.

I turned my hand over and squeezed his fingers and smiled.

"You're probably right," I said.

After dinner he washed up and I dried, the way we always did, and he put on a film he'd been wanting to watch and I sat beside him on the couch and stared at the screen and saw nothing.

At ten-thirty he said he was tired and kissed my forehead and went to bed.

I waited twenty minutes.

Then I went to his desk.

I had never gone through his desk before.

There had never been a reason.

The drawers were unlocked — why would he lock them, in his own home, from a wife who trusted him completely?

In the second drawer, under a folder of old utility bills, I found a phone I didn't recognize.

A second phone, prepaid, the kind you buy with cash.

I pressed the power button.

It was password protected.

I tried our anniversary.

It didn't open.