The boy nodded and left slowly, looking back once from the hallway. Marcus waited until he heard footsteps on the stairs. Then he laid the jacket, watch, cologne, and business card on the coffee table in a neat row and asked, “How many Saturdays?” Lauren’s face crumpled before she answered. “Marcus—”
“How many?” She looked toward the hall. “Can we please not do this like an interrogation?”
He stared at her. “Our son just walked in wearing another man’s clothes and told me that man comes here when I work Saturdays. You are not in a position to criticize the format.” Lauren pressed both hands to her forehead. The silence stretched until Marcus felt his own pulse in his jaw.
“Since February,” she said. It was October.
Marcus sat back down because the floor seemed to shift. Eight months. Not a kiss. Not a one-time mistake. Eight months contained Valentine’s Day, Caleb’s birthday, their anniversary, a trip to Hilton Head, Easter at his mother’s house, Lauren’s fortieth birthday dinner, and countless nights Marcus had fallen asleep beside her believing the ordinary structure of his life was shared reality.
“How often?” Lauren whispered, “It wasn’t every Saturday.” He laughed once, without humor. “That is not an answer.”
“Maybe twice a month at first.” She swallowed. “Sometimes more. Sometimes not at all.” “At the house?” Her eyes dropped.
Marcus’s voice changed. “At my house?” “Some of the time.” The sentence made something hot rise through him so fast he had to stand and walk toward the fireplace.
He put both hands on the mantel and looked at a framed photograph from three summers earlier: Marcus, Lauren, and Caleb on a beach in South Carolina, all three squinting into sun, Caleb on Marcus’s shoulders, Lauren’s arm around his waist. The image seemed obscene now, not because the happiness had been fake then, but because photographs were incapable of warning anyone what came next. “Did he sleep in our bed?” Marcus asked. “No.”
He turned. “Do not lie to improve this.” “I’m not. Never our bedroom.” “Then where?”
“The downstairs guest room.” Marcus closed his eyes.