I read the description three times.
A counseling center?
Why would Eliam and Vanessa be meeting there?
Was one of them sick?
Was someone else involved?
I searched the building’s name again, hoping to find something that would explain what I had seen.
Nothing did.
I closed the laptop and sat in the darkness.
For the first time, I considered a possibility I had not wanted to entertain.
Perhaps the secret wasn’t about betrayal.
Perhaps it was about something they were both afraid to tell me.
But if that were true, why had Eliam lied about work?
And why had Vanessa cried?
The next morning, I woke before Eliam.
I watched him sleep for a few seconds, studying the lines around his eyes and the small scar near his chin.
I remembered how he had gotten that scar.
We had been married for only six months when he cut himself while trying to fix a broken window in our first apartment. He had insisted that it was nothing, but I had driven him to urgent care anyway.
