The gray sky spat needles of chilly rain as she climbed into her Escalade in the driveway. After starting the engine and cranking up the heat, she took the panties and laid them out on the passenger seat. Then she fastened her seat belt and pulled out.

Her shoulders felt crushed, and her face was streaming. She couldn’t get a deep enough breath into her cramped lungs.

She drove to the end of the street and then turned and drove back on the neighboring street, passing large well-tended lawns and equally large familiar houses. Zigzagging back and forth, going nowhere, her mind a blank.

Her cell phone rang. She ignored it. It rang several more times until she put it on vibrate. Then it buzzed like an angry hornet. She didn’t want to ever talk to him again. She felt like she could drive for weeks and weeks. Just watch the road as it came scrolling toward her. Why couldn’t she do that? When she thought of how trapped she felt, a wave of anguish rolled through her.

Every light on the dashboard of the Escalade lit up, and the engine sputtered. Suddenly calming, she listened as it gave one last cough before it died. Using the SUV’s momentum, she steered to a stop at the curb and put it in park opposite a large, landscaped retention pond at the edge of the neighborhood.

She told the absent woman who owned the panties, “Today’s Thursday. The cleaning service came yesterday morning. I got home from visiting my mother last night, and I only just got around to straightening the bedroom today. So you were in my bed yesterday afternoon.”

“True,” admitted the woman in her imagination. “There wasn’t any other time it could have been.”

Molly could picture her. The woman would be leggy. Perhaps lightly tanned, with golden-blond hair and freshly returned from a trip to the Caribbean. The purple panties would look good on her. She would be intelligent as well as pretty, educated, a knowing expression in her worldly eyes. She might hold her mouth in a slight ironic slant.

She probably looked a great deal like Molly. Austin had a type.

Molly said between her teeth, “You left those panties on purpose. Nobody forgets something like that. You left them for either Austin or me to find. If Austin found them, it would remind him of what you and he did. If I found them, I would learn about your affair. Either way would work for you.”

In her mind, the woman smiled and crossed her long legs. “Indeed. What else have you got?”

She clenched the steering wheel with both hands. “Austin wouldn’t bring an unknown hooker into the house. If he were going to have a hooker, he would go to a hotel. This is a relationship. You and he have been together before.”