My mother had called twice.
Three coworkers had checked in.
My department head had emailed.
Blythe had sent messages from the night she picked me up.
There was nothing from Conrad.
No missed call.
No text.
No voicemail.
Nothing asking whether I had made it home.
Nothing asking why I had not walked through our front door.
Nothing asking whether his wife was alive.
Ten days.
I put the phone on the blanket.
Blythe sat in the chair near the window.
“Say something.”
I looked at her.
“Don’t call him.”
“Miriam.”
“I want to know how long it takes.”
“That is a terrible experiment.”
“I know.”
“Which is exactly why I support it.”
It took two more days.
On the twelfth morning, Conrad called at nine.
I watched his name appear on the screen.
Blythe was making toast in the kitchen.
I answered.
“Hello.”
“Hey.”
His voice was casual.
Almost cheerful.
“You doing okay?”
I closed my eyes.
“I had pneumonia.”
A pause.
“Seriously?”
“Yes.”
“Wow.”
I waited.
He did not ask where I had been.
He did not ask who had taken me to the doctor.
He did not ask why I had never come home.
“That’s rough,” he said.
Rough.
I stared at the ceiling.
“When are you coming back?”
“Soon.”
“Okay. I’ve been buried at work.”
“I’m sure.”
“Call me when you’re heading over.”
“I will.”
The conversation lasted less than three minutes.
When it ended, Blythe appeared in the doorway.
“Twelve days.”
“Yes.”
“He still didn’t ask where you were.”
“No.”
Her face tightened.
“Miriam.”
I pushed the blankets away.
“What?”
“What are you thinking?”
I looked toward the laptop on her kitchen table.
“That my husband did not wonder where I was because he already had somewhere else to be.”
I was a financial analyst.
For most of my career, that meant examining systems other people assumed were too boring to hide secrets.
Expense reports.
Corporate structures.
Subsidiaries.
Accounts that looked ordinary until one number appeared repeatedly where it should not.
I knew how to follow patterns.
I had simply never imagined applying that instinct to my own marriage.
Conrad and I shared a vehicle app that stored location history.
I had never opened the historical log.
Trust makes many forms of information feel irrelevant.
Now I opened it.
His car had visited the same building on Melrose Avenue eleven times in two months.
Two-hour stops.
Three-hour stops.
Tuesday afternoons.
Late evenings.
One Sunday morning when he told me he was at his office preparing a client presentation.
I wrote the address on a notepad.
Then I checked our shared household expenses.
Nothing obvious.
Conrad had always maintained a second card for client-related purchases.
“Cleaner accounting,” he called it.
I had never questioned the explanation.
I had access to the statements because I handled our annual tax records.
November.
$4,200 at a high-end jeweler downtown.
October.
$3,800 at a furniture store three blocks from the Melrose address.
Several restaurant charges.
A home-goods retailer.
A parking garage directly beneath the same building.
Blythe stood behind me.
“You okay?”
“No.”
“Want me to close it?”
“No.”