Damage Assessment

The palm reader didn't charge Elena, just took her hand and said, "You're holding something that isn't yours." Elena pulled away, annoyed with herself for indulging in this beachside superstition during her company retreat. She'd come to escape Richard's moods, not to receive cryptic prophecies from a stranger with chipped nail polish.

Back at the conference center, she found Richard's Panama hat on her bed — he'd flown to Phoenix for a sales conference, but somehow his hat had migrated to her room. Or maybe he'd never left. The thought crystallized in her stomach like ice.

She tracked his location through the family phone plan. He was at a Marriott. In Orlando. Not Phoenix.

Elena returned to her room and found Richard's pill organizer on the nightstand. The vitamin compartment was empty, but the Cialis slot was full. He hadn't taken his vitamins in months, hadn't wanted to try for a baby since last Christmas. But he'd needed the Cialis.

The pieces aligned like collision geometry.

She drove to their house at 2 AM, the convertible's top down, wind stripping her composure. The water damage in the ceiling — the one he'd sworn was from the neighbor's upstairs pipe — now spread in a dark bloom above their bed. She'd believed him. She'd believed everything.

Richard called at dawn, voice thick with sleep. "Elena? Where are you?"

"I'm home," she said. "Looking at the water stain."

Silence. Then: "It's not what you think."

"You're right," she said, and he exhaled, that sharp release of a man who thinks he's won. "It's worse." She paused, letting him marinate in it. "There was a fox in the garden last night. A beautiful red fox, sitting right where your car should be."

"What?"

"It watched me pack," she said. "Like it knew something I didn't."

"Elena, you're not making sense."

"I'm making perfect sense." She dropped her wedding ring into the toilet and flushed. "I'm just not making your sense anymore."

The water rushed and swallowed, and she didn't look down.