He’d been preparing for this for the last minute, thus the neutral expression, she thought. His systems were in overdrive trying to wiggle out of this.

“What? No!” But Winnie already knew it was true. She could see it in his eyes. He was ashamed. He was bowing his head a little like Dulce had when she walked away.

“Nigel,” she said firmly. “Tell me the truth. I deserve the truth at least, don’t you think?”

He stood up, almost sending the table toppling. “You don’t get to come in here and accuse me of things.” Winnie was so lost in her shock that she found nothing to say. He was red-faced, though his lips were shockingly white, like he’d bitten into a powdered doughnut. It was Nigel’s tell; when he was lying, when he was guilty. His outburst immediately embarrassed her.

Recoiling in her seat, she felt hurt rise in her throat, making her want to moan out loud. He slammed out of the door as she sat, still as a statue. People were looking; of course they were—Winnie would have looked, too. And then she knew—he’d done it to throw her off—to buy time for a better lie. Using her weakness against her was an all-time low for their marriage. She drained her water glass, left a generous tip, and took an Uber home.

Five hours later, Nigel walked in the door after work. Winnie had spent those five hours finding out everything she could about Dulce Tucker. She could hear him depositing his work bag in the junk closet, then his heavy tread up the stairs as he went to change out of his work clothes.

He came down a few minutes later wearing sweats and a T-shirt. Seating himself at the table, he folded his hands rather piously on the tabletop. “Can we talk?”

“I would say we need to,” she said calmly. She’d been nursing a tea for the last few hours, just pouring hot water over the same tea bag again and again. It didn’t matter; Winnie wasn’t tasting anything.

“Winnie,” he began. “There’s just been a lot of stress lately—on both of us—I wasn’t myself.”

Winnie waited a few beats for him to say more, to apply some salve to the wounds he had inflicted with his actions. More, anyway, than just “I wasn’t myself.” She leaned closer—just an inch or so to urge him to finish his sentence.

“Oh...oh,” she said. “Is that the end, are you—?”

“Goddammit!” Nigel slammed his fist on the surface of the table. Winnie’s salt and pepper shakers wobbled. “Nothing is good enough for you.”

She blinked at him for a few minutes in disbelief. Nigel was acting like she was chiding him for not picking up the right brand of yogurt.

“I didn’t say that. Was that an...admission?”

Nigel’s compact frame was tense, despite how relaxed he tried to appear. Her attraction to this man was primal because, even as gaslighted as she was, she wanted him in a way that made her feel shameful.

“Why are you like this, Winnie? So suspicious. I’ve never given you reason. It makes me feel like I’ve done something when I haven’t.”

“But haven’t you?” Winnie couldn’t help it, her face was incredulous. Was it really happening this way? She’d caught her husband having a cozy lunch date with Dulce fucking Tucker, and now he was angry with her? It felt too weird to be real. Winnie had met Dulce during the last Christmas party at Nigel’s work when she was a new hire. She’d come over from a temp agency when their secretary was out on maternity leave, and then later, when said secretary decided to be a stay-at-home mom, they took Dulce on permanently. Nigel used to make jokes about her name, and Winnie joined in, figuring it was better than wondering if he was attracted to her. Turns out he was.

“Winnie—” he tried again. “We’ve both made terrible mistakes—”

“Have you slept with her or not?”

He dropped his head. “No.”

She didn’t believe him, but he’d never change his story. When Nigel lied, he stayed committed to that lie. She knew that better than anyone.

“But you were planning to?” She could see him mulling over this one—stewing would be a better word. Under the table her hands grabbed at each other, holding tight.

“Yes.” He seemed almost relieved to say it.

“Why?”

“I don’t know...boredom.” He said it with a challenge. “You’re always inside your head. I can’t get in there.”

“Ohh, that’s not it.” She pressed her lips together so hard she imagined they looked like Nigel’s.

“Isn’t it?” Something else had settled across Nigel’s face. Winnie recognized it; Nigel got like that when he was playing a game and winning. She thought about the way he moved his bottle of liquor around to throw her off. Everything was a game to him.

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore, Nigel.” The truth was that she didn’t feel capable of talking about it anymore. A line had been crossed, the trust they’d worked so hard to rebuild, kicked out from under them like a wobbly stool. She didn’t know how to put into words what she was feeling because there were no words for it.

Everything in her life was coming off the rails: her marriage, her relationship with her son, and her mental health. She was either being stalked, or she was imagining being stalked, and quite frankly Winnie didn’t know what was worse. There was no one to turn to, not a soul who would understand. She couldn’t leave him because of what she’d done, and he couldn’t leave her because of what he’d helped her do. They were tied together in this life. Winnie locked herself in the bathroom, wishing she had a bottle of wine.

Nigel retired to his den, where Winnie assumed he’d be spending the night. After he’d gone, Winnie made some tea and sat at her computer, trying to get her mind on something else besides the storm that was her life.

She was checking her email, aggressively sipping at chamomile tea, when she clicked on a message sent by the King County Library system. Winnie had seen enough of these back in the day to know what it was before she clicked on it. After Samuel was born, she’d read voraciously for years, making regular trips to the library with him strapped to her chest. Occasionally she’d read a book she really liked and then, instead of returning it, she’d read it again; that always amounted to fines. But she hadn’t cared, they’d been worth it. And sure enough, when the body of the email downloaded to her screen, Winnie’s suspicion was confirmed: a library fine.

But that couldn’t be right. Winnie hadn’t been to the library in years, like at least four or five. Not to mention she didn’t have a clue where her library card was. It had to be an error in the system, or a ghost email haunting her from her inbox past. Looking more closely, she saw that it was a fine for a book that had been checked out on October 5 of this year. Winnie leaned closer to the screen to read the name of the book she’d supposedly checked out; it was in fine print like a little librarian elf typed it—Child Abduction: A Theory of Criminal Behavior.