He Told Me He Was Working Late—But I Found Her Earring Under Our Bed. I Smiled, Put It In A Box, And Set The Table For Three.

It was one of those tiny studs, gold with a little pearl. Not mine—I don’t wear pearls. I was vacuuming under the bed because I couldn’t sleep, and there it was, just sitting near the leg of the nightstand like it belonged there.

I stared at it for a long time. It wasn’t the first sign. There’d been perfume that wasn’t mine on his shirt last week. A mysterious “work dinner” that ran past midnight. A hotel charge that he brushed off as a “client emergency.”