I didn’t think I changed, but somehow becoming settled in a relationship, becoming mother to William and Jessica, made me someone else. Someone apparently less than I’d been before.

Walking through the terminal, pulling my suitcase, I ask myself if I would have left Daniel over a slipup, a misstep, a simple infidelity. (Is it ever simple, though?) No. No, of course not. But this was more than a mistake on Daniel’s part. This was proof that we weren’t who we once were, we didn’t have what we needed, we couldn’t be what we’d hoped to be.

I don’t know what Daniel was looking for when he started the affair. More, probably. But that’s exactly what I wanted, too. More. And admitting that I wanted more turned out to be the beginning of the end.

On the plane, I close my eyes as the jet taxis down the runway and lifts off.

I always say a little prayer when I fly, always send the kids my love and try to make peace with life. If I could end up divorced, I could end up dead. Grim but true, and airplanes provide great opportunities to face one’s mortality.

But we reach cruising altitude without even a bump of turbulence, and the sky above the dark clouds blanketing Seattle is blue and bright, almost dazzling with the intense morning light.

God’s country, William used to call the sky at thirty thousand feet. Up here God is always smiling, he’d say, and if I were God, I’d be in a good mood too if the sky was always blue.

Once the seat belt sign is turned off, I get up to use the lavatory. On the way back, I catch the eye of one of the businessmen. He lowers his paper to look at me, and his gaze lingers, revealing interest, and I smile a little, a silent hello. It isn’t until I’m seated and he reopens his newspaper that I see the wedding band on his left hand.

Bastard.

Maybe in the past if a married man looked at me, smiled at me, I wouldn’t have reacted this way, wouldn’t have felt so angry and defensive. But now that I know about Daniel’s affair (affairs?), the wedding rings on married men glint bright and hard at me.

Was Daniel wearing his wedding ring when he met his first mistress? Did he wear it when they were in bed together? What did he tell her about our marriage?

I take out a book and try to read, but the book doesn’t grab me. I try my magazines, and even those—the newest issue of Oprah, Vanity Fair, and Town & Country—can’t hold me. I don’t know if it’s the rough past few days or my nerves at returning to Hawaii, but the flight feels endless. I fidget, and fidget some more.