Elizabeth calls my name. Her voice is too close. I darken her phone and hurry to meet her on the landing. She says, “We’re all running to a bookshop, then dropping Bonnie at her car. We won’t be long. You’re blocking Luna so I’m taking the Audi.” She skips back down to her fan club as I tell her to take her time.

More chatter, then less, then none. The front door opens, closes. Engines start, fade to silence. The house is mine.

Snooping doesn’t come naturally, but I do my best, starting with our bathroom wastebasket (wads of innocuous tissue, strands of used dental floss) and moving on to Elizabeth’s makeup drawers (cosmetics and earrings, medicine and junk, nail clippers, nail polish, files). No condoms hidden in the Band-Aid box. No love notes taped to the bottom of a jewelry box. Still, something feels out of place. Something’s off.

Her closet and dresser: sock and underwear drawers, the toes of her shoes, the backs of her shelves. Check, check, check. Her pillow smells like my wife, not cologne or sweaty boy. No traces of someone who isn’t me. Of course, there wouldn’t be. Elizabeth isn’t lazy. She wouldn’t leave clues as cliché as lipstick on a collar, cologne on a pillow, used condoms in the garbage, dirty underthings where they shouldn’t be. Elizabeth wouldn’t save incriminating text messages or photos. She would never be so stupid, even if she were so bold, and her hair doesn’t smell like cologne or get stuck in other people’s drains because she’s not dumb—or, better yet, because there’s no smoking gun to find, which should be a relief, but it only sparks disgust, because now I see that it’s come to this. Nick has turned me into a man who raids his wife’s closet, rummages through dresser drawers, puts things back neatly where he found them, and even knowing as much, I can’t stop.

Shoeboxes line the shelf high above Elizabeth’s clothing racks. I have to use her stepstool to take them down, one by one, cracking the lids and inspecting their contents before putting them back. Sparkly high heels. Snakeskin sneakers. Thigh-high boots in white leather with fringe. The fourth box contains a pair of Frye boots I’ve never seen, but the soles are misshapen, the ankles scuffed and the leather worn thin at the toe. Instead of tissue paper, a folded piece of fabric lines the bottom of the box. It stays anchored when I try to lift it away, so I move the boots, and I remove the bundle beneath them: a thin white T-shirt wrapped around a notebook and a stack of greeting cards all tied up with a string. I recognize the top card right away. Shiny gold letters on recycled paper with rough edges. The card Stuart sent Elizabeth for her birthday last year.