I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, reaching for my phone in my pocket, not to call anyone but to know that I could. I didn’t hear the closet doors opening until Reed spoke, but I didn’t stir. I opened my eyes slowly and looked directly at his fucking face. At this point very few things scared me, but he was on the list as one of them.

“Do I know you?” he asked, his head cocked like a puppy confused about why his supposed treat tasted like medicine.

“What?” I said, trying to muster the attitude of a pleasant but slightly ditzy girlfriend. That’s what he needed me to be. Since I’m prettier than his wife, he needs to think I’m at least equally as stupid.

“You just seem so familiar.” He was staring at my face like he was calculating it, running my nose and eyes through the Rolodex in his head—probably of women he’d fucked. The multitudes this man went through only to be domesticated by Veronica because his mother told him to be. The only true way to remedy someone’s fuckboy reputation is to get him husbanded and fathered as soon as possible.

“Maybe in pictures from Graham?” I offered, knowing that wasn’t remotely convincing.

“No, that’s not it. It’s not your face. Just your...vibe.”

He said it like a Mormon expat living in Hawaii who just discovered surfing, coconut milk, and premarital sex. “My vibe?”

“Just something about you...” he said. I reminded myself to smile, to loosen my shoulders, to laugh it off. He doesn’t know me, I told myself. He knows nothing about me. “I definitely recognize you from somewhere.”

I lean my ear against the hard wooden door of Reed and Veronica’s room, listening for any motion inside. Were they trying for Baby Number Two? Then I look down at the Apple Watch draped onto my wrist. 4:18. They wouldn’t be awake or moving. Only I’m up at this hour.

The truth is he does know me from somewhere. He hasn’t been able to figure it out since that day in the closet, but I live in constant fear that he’ll wake up one morning and it will pop into his memory with the same clarity of what he ate for dinner the night before. I hate that he has something over me but he’s too stupid to know it. I hate that I’m here and that he’s here. I hate that he has a wife and a kid. I hate that there’s not much stopping me from bursting through the door, plucking Veronica’s stiletto off the cold floor, and jabbing it into his neck.

Instead, I pull the missing poster out of my bra. I unfold it, carefully. I run it back and forth over the door frame’s trim to get out the creases.