Then I poured myself a cup of coffee and sat on the patio outside my back door. I contemplated the cherry tree, the birds, the sunshine, and found all of it too perfect this morning. I felt certain there was a flaw hidden somewhere.

I heard an incoming text on my phone. It was from Amelia. We have a problem here. Please come upstairs.

My stomach dropped. Something bad was about to happen or had already happened.

I wrote back: Sure. Just a few minutes.

Natalie had appeared disturbed by something. What had happened to her? The floor underneath my feet was shifting. I needed to know the nature of the problem. I couldn’t walk into the Straubs’ house defenseless, without the necessary tools.

In the bathroom, I splashed cold water on my face and dried it. Then I applied moisturizer, under-eye concealer, mascara, and lip gloss. I combed through my hair. Finally I was pleased with my reflection in the mirror.

I walked up the stairs, entered the Straubs’ front door, and proceeded down the hallway. From across the room, I could see that Amelia, Fritz, and Natalie were all seated around the dining table. The morning sun was shooting in through the skylight from above and through the bifold doors. Amelia’s skin looked bright white in the sun. Her lips had disappeared, but her dark eyes were taking up more space than usual in her face. Next to her, Fritz sat expressionless, his eyes flat and dull. Seated across the table, Natalie was looking down, seemingly focused on pointing and flexing her bare feet.

As I approached, I could see that Amelia was holding something in front of her. I took a few steps toward her. It looked to be a thick pile of papers in her hand. I took a few more steps and could now tell it was a stack of photographs. I neared the table, close enough to see the edge of the top photo, and then recognized it. I felt the ground dropping out from underneath me.

It was a graphic photo of me and Fritz in bed together—including a computer-generated image of Fritz’s naked groin that I’d photoshopped and fine-tuned until it appeared completely realistic. I’d scrupulously deleted all such photos from my hard drive, but I’d chosen to keep a few of the prints.

I was falling. “Oh God,” I said. “That was … was so stupid.”

“What is this?” Amelia whispered.

Fritz looked up at me, as though he were hoping for a valid explanation.

Amelia flipped to the second photo in the stack. Then the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth. She laid them out on the dining table in front of her. They were photos of me and Fritz in different sexual positions. Over the last few months, whenever I’d been bored, I’d gone back to these photos. Sexual experimentation in the photographs had been exciting for me.