He bends under the spray and scrubs at his scalp, sending foam flying onto the glass shower door. When he twists to look at me through that same door, his features are distorted. “It’s important to spend holidays together.”

The water shuts off. Ken steps out, reaching for his towel. He dries his face first, giving me a full view of his naked body. In clothes, he looks soft and rounded, not fat but “Dad-bod.” He’s muscled, though. Deceptively strong.

I can’t stop myself from comparing him to Christian, whose tailored suit gave him a trim waist and hard chest, but whose nakedness revealed softness and lack of attention.

“Jewel.” Ken snaps his fingers. “I asked you to grab me another towel. This one stinks.”

My cheeks tingle, and I’m glad for the excuse to turn away so I can grab a fresh towel from the linen closet. I hand it to him as he tosses the other one over the pile of his clothes with an odd deliberateness. He wraps the new one around his waist.

“I’ve told you so many times, Jewelann, even if I’m not here, you need to switch out my towel every three days. They start to stink like mildew.”

I’ve never been able to smell it. I usually wait until the day I expect him to get home, assuming he will never know. Our marriage is a string of deceptions, one after the other, pearls on a necklace. Cut the string, and they’ll all scatter.

He moves past me to the sink, and I study his body surreptitiously, looking for evidence of what I’ve been suspecting for a long time. Love bites? Strange bruises? Stripes of passion from a long-nailed hand? He’s come home from trips marked that way before, but this time I can’t see anything that shouldn’t be there.

Oh, wait. There. A glimpse of something on his inner thigh as he bends over the sink to spit out his toothpaste. A small half-ring of red marks. Mosquito bites or love bites, I’m too far away to tell.

In the mirror, his reflection catches my gaze. He’s got a froth of toothpaste in the corners of his mouth. He spits again. Wipes his mouth clean. Puts his toothbrush back in the holder.

“How was the reunion?” Ken asks, holding my gaze.

“Good. A lot of fun.” Does he know I’ve spotted the marks? Does he care? I’m suddenly self-conscious there might be something on me that he can see, something I didn’t notice when I looked myself over this morning.

We stare at each other in the glass.

“I’m glad you had fun,” Ken says finally, looking away.

“Eli and I were going out to Yellow Springs for a hike, grab something from Ha Ha Pizza. Do you … want to come with us?” I wince internally at the way my voice skips on the invitation.

“Nah. I’ve got stuff to do.”

“Do you want us to bring you anything back for dinner?”