The name landed with the dull weight of something already half known. Marcus had met Daniel at the company holiday party two winters ago — polite, smiling, Asian American, good at small talk, good at standing near Mei's elbow as if proximity were professional courtesy. Marcus had shaken the man's hand. Marcus had joked about sales numbers. Marcus had gone home believing the world was still arranged the way he had left it.
"How long," Marcus said.
Mei did not pretend not to understand. "Eight months. A little more."
Eight months. Marcus counted backward through birthdays and school concerts and weekend pancakes and late-night texts that said On my way and Love you and the soft domestic currency of a marriage that had still, somehow, been functioning. Eight months of Mei coming home smelling faintly of someone else's cologne and calling it the office. Eight months of Marcus trusting the shape of his own life.
He sat on the opposite side of the bed from her, the mattress dipping under his weight, the ivory linen between them like a border neither of them had agreed to draw. His lined beard shadowed his jaw when he clenched it. Dark eyes fixed on the pale oak of the nightstand as if wood grain could explain betrayal.
"Does he come here often?"
"No. Twice. Only twice. I swear."
"You swear," Marcus repeated. "On what. On Nora. On the photographs. On the ring you still wear while you let another man change clothes in our bedroom."