Maybe the shoes meant nothing.
Maybe the glasses downstairs meant nothing.
Maybe I was about to open that door and feel stupid for imagining the worst.
I walked to the guest room anyway.
Marcus was asleep beside Diane.
I didn’t scream.
I didn’t throw anything.
I didn’t drag the blanket away or demand that either of them wake up and explain themselves.
There was nothing they could have said in that moment that would have changed what I was looking at.
The wine bottle on the nightstand answered me.
The two glasses answered me.
My sister’s head on the pillow beside my husband answered me.
I stood in the doorway long enough to understand what I was seeing.
Then I quietly closed the door.
That surprised even me.
I had imagined betrayal before in the abstract way married people sometimes do when they hear about someone else’s marriage collapsing.
I had imagined shouting.
I had imagined demanding the truth.
I had imagined needing to hear the guilty person admit it.
But standing there after finding Noah on the floor, I didn’t need a confession.
I needed to think.
I went into the bathroom and locked the door.
For several seconds, I stared at my own reflection.
My hair was pulled back from work.
There were tired shadows under my eyes.
I was still wearing the same scrubs I had worn while checking on patients all night.
And suddenly eight months of small questions came back to me.
