She was tucked under my gray knit throw blanket as if she had been cold and someone had lovingly covered her. Her blonde hair spilled over Caleb’s shirt. One bare foot peeked out from beneath the blanket. Her left hand rested on his sternum, fingers loose and possessive, and the thin gold bracelet she always wore—a tiny green stone hanging from the chain—glinted when she shifted in her sleep.
I remember that bracelet with absurd clarity.
I remember thinking, That is peridot, not emerald.
As if identifying a gemstone mattered when my marriage was lying on the couch in front of me.
My stomach dropped so hard I tasted metal.
For a few seconds, my body became stupid with shock. I did not move toward them. I did not move away. I floated somewhere above myself, watching a woman who looked like me stand in a hallway and stare at the scene she had been trying not to imagine for months. My hands trembled. The tremor moved up my arms into my jaw. My pulse hammered in my teeth. I wanted to say Caleb’s name. I wanted to scream. I wanted to rip the blanket away, turn on every light, force the two of them out of sleep and into the fluorescent honesty of being caught.