I was supposed to move to New York to pursue acting after graduation, but the more time I spent with him, the sillier it seemed. New York had been Betsy’s plan. In high school, and then at Georgia State, she’d spun tales of how we’d rent someone’s walk-in closet, sleep in bunk beds, eat Top Ramen. We’d waitress, covering each other’s shifts for auditions, until we got our breaks. I was holding on to a future she’d invented. One that she’d already lost interest in.

She and Marshall had been married two years by then. They’d finished the police academy and had full-time jobs and an apartment. They were grown-ups, talking about trying for a kid of their own. Watching them together, happy and bonded, taught me that the shape of love changed inside a marriage, but not necessarily for the worse. It could deepen. Get better and sweeter. They were building something real.

The things Trey wanted started sounding real to me as well. Real, but very specific. I wasn’t sure if he would shift his detailed dreams enough to make them ours. I started editing them, out loud. Yes to a big house with an outdoor kitchen, but not in Buckhead. I’d met his family by then and felt their chill. I wanted Decatur, which was artsier and, back then, more diverse. Yes, hell yes, to kids, and yes to Robert Evan Cabbat IV, if we had a boy. But no to Ireland for a girl. I liked classic names: Eleanor, Rose, Claire. Also, I thought a Tybee house would tie us down. I wanted to travel, show our kids the world and see it myself. He liked my ideas, and our dreamy whispers started to sound more like plans. When he asked me, I said yes.

It had been such a good call. Sixteen years in and we loved each other still, rock solid. The spark of attraction between us waned at times, but it always flared again, strong and bright and somehow grounding. He was a great dad, patient and good-humored.

But in the quiet darkness of the Lyft sedan, listening to the young driver whisper nonsense with his lover, I was thinking clearly. About Spence, and the mother and her daughter, and lies, and my husband’s job. Trey and Spence worked together on almost every case they did. Whatever Spence had done, Trey must have known about it. Maybe Trey had helped.

I’d push the thought away, only to have my husband’s beloved face rise up again in my mind. Questions rose with it, brand-new and ugly.

What did you do?

And worse. What will it cost us?