At 2:47 a.m., my husband texted me from Las Vegas: “I just married my coworker. I’ve been sleeping with her for eight months, and you’re boring and pathetic.” He expected me to cry. Instead, I replied, “Great,” and opened my laptop. By sunrise, I had canceled all his credit cards and changed the locks on my house. I simply cut him off completely. But the real shock came when…

My name was Clara Jensen. I was thirty-four years old the night my marriage ended. If anyone had told me a week earlier that I would be effectively divorced via a text message, I would have laughed in their face. We weren’t wildly in love, but we were functional. We had a tidy brick house outside Chicago, a color-coded calendar, and a life that looked flawless from the curb.

At 2:47 AM that Tuesday, laughter was the last thing left in my body.

Ethan was supposed to be in Las Vegas for a marketing conference. He had kissed my cheek before leaving that morning, casually saying, “Don’t wait up if my flight gets in weird.”