The restaurant glowed with candlelight, soft amber reflections trembling in the windows as rain moved quietly down the glass outside.
Our tenth anniversary dinner was unfolding almost exactly the way I had planned it.
Almost.
I had chosen Bellamy's because Amy had mentioned it casually six months earlier after seeing a photograph online. It was the kind of restaurant we normally considered too expensive for an ordinary night out. White tablecloths. Low music. Small candles floating inside heavy glass holders. Waiters who seemed to know when you needed something before you asked.
I had booked the corner table three weeks in advance.
I had even called ahead to make sure they still served the chocolate hazelnut cake Amy loved.
Ten years deserved some effort.
At least that was what I had told myself.
My name is Daniel Mercer. I was thirty-eight that night. Amy was thirty-seven.
We had been married for exactly ten years, together for twelve.
We had survived two apartments, one house, three job changes between us, my mother's cancer scare, her father's heart surgery, one miscarriage we almost never talked about anymore, years of trying to decide whether we still wanted children, and enough ordinary arguments about money, laundry, families, vacations, Christmas schedules, thermostat settings, and whose turn it was to buy groceries to make our marriage feel thoroughly lived in.
Not perfect.
But ours.
I thought I knew Amy.
I knew she hated mushrooms but liked mushroom soup if they were blended completely.
I knew she slept with one foot outside the blanket even in winter.
I knew she cried during animal rescue videos but could watch true-crime documentaries without flinching.
I knew that whenever she was nervous, she rubbed the side of her right thumb with her index finger.
I knew she hated public attention, loved bookstores, lied about liking hiking because I liked it, and secretly bought expensive shampoo while complaining whenever I spent too much money on coffee.
After twelve years, I believed I understood the architecture of her life.
Maybe not every room.
But certainly the foundation.
That night, sitting across from her beneath the warm candlelight, I began to realize there might be an entire locked wing I had never known existed.
The first thing I noticed was the wine.
Amy had always been a light drinker.
One glass at dinner.
Maybe two at a wedding if the music was good and she didn't have to drive.
She disliked feeling out of control. She had once told me she hated the sensation of hearing herself speak half a second after the words had already left her mouth.
But that night she finished her first glass of pinot noir before our appetizers arrived.
When the waiter asked if she wanted another, she said yes immediately.
I looked at her.
"Celebrating hard tonight?"
She smiled.
"Ten years deserves two glasses."
"That's mathematically sound."
She laughed.
A little late.
That was the second thing I noticed.
Amy usually laughed before I finished stupid jokes because she knew where they were going.
Tonight, there was a delay.
I would say something.
She would stare at me for half a second.
Then laugh as if she had just remembered that was the correct response.
At first I assumed she was tired.
She had worked late most of the week. Her company was preparing for a product launch, and she had spent Thursday night on her laptop until nearly midnight.
But tiredness did not explain the way her fingers kept moving along the stem of her wineglass.
Rub.
Stop.
Rub.
Her thumb against her finger.
The nervous habit.
"You okay?" I asked.
She looked up too quickly.
"Of course."
"You seem somewhere else."
"I'm here."
"I know you're physically here."
Amy smiled.
"Very observant."
"Ten years of marriage."
"That's all it takes?"
"Apparently."
She reached across the table and touched my wrist.
"I'm okay, Daniel."
I wanted to believe her.
So I did.
For another twenty minutes.
We ate.
We talked about work.
She complained about a woman named Laura in accounting who had apparently scheduled four meetings that could have been one email.
I told her about my new manager's obsession with productivity software.
We discussed a possible trip to Maine the following spring.
Ordinary things.
Marriage things.
But beneath every sentence, something else seemed to be happening.
Amy kept glancing at me when she thought I wasn't looking.
Studying me.
Almost memorizing my reactions.
By the time our main courses were cleared, she was halfway through her third glass of wine.
I stopped joking about it.
Something was wrong.
I didn't know what.
And the human mind is cruel when uncertainty gives it enough room.
Within minutes, I had imagined nearly every disaster available to a married man.
She was sick.
She had lost her job.
She had debt I didn't know about.
Someone in her family was dying.
She wanted a divorce.
She was having an affair.
That last possibility entered my mind and refused to leave.
I hated myself for thinking it.
Nothing about Amy's behavior over the previous months suggested infidelity.
She wasn't guarding her phone.
She wasn't disappearing unexpectedly.
Our physical relationship had not changed dramatically.
She had not suddenly started dressing differently or working strange hours beyond the demands of her job.
But jealousy does not require evidence.
Only uncertainty.
The waiter brought dessert.