"I know how it sounds."
"It sounds like my five-year-old describing your affair in language clear enough for a courtroom." His brown eyes did not leave her face. The subtle gray at his temples looked suddenly like frost. "How long."
Amara did not pretend not to understand. "Eleven months. Almost a year."
Eleven months. Carlos counted backward through birthdays and parent-teacher conferences and weekend pancakes and late-night texts that said Landing soon and Love you and the soft domestic currency of a marriage that had still, somehow, been functioning. Eleven months of Amara coming home smelling faintly of someone else's cologne and calling it the gallery opening. Eleven months of Carlos trusting the shape of his own life while a silver watch learned the geography of his wife's nightstand.
He set the watch on the coffee table beside Sophia's workbook. The two objects looked obscene together — fractions and betrayal sharing a surface of polished wood. His gold wedding band felt suddenly heavier than the silver he had just put down.
"Does he come here often?"
"Not often. Enough." Amara's full lips pressed together. Almond eyes shone without yet spilling. "The back door because the front faces the street. Because I was a coward about neighbors. Because I told myself I was protecting the children from confusion, when what I was protecting was my own double life."
"You swear," Carlos said, though she had not sworn anything yet. "On what. On Sophia. On Julian. On the photographs. On the ring you still wear while you let another man leave his watch beside our bed."