Chapter 2

I remember when Olivia and I first started dating. My sister, Sarah, had been ecstatic, more excited than I was.

"She' s perfect for you, Ethan," she' d said, grabbing my arm. "She' s beautiful, she' s sweet. You need to lock that down."

Sarah had never been the warm, fuzzy type. She was older than me, fiercely ambitious, and had always treated my personal life with a kind of detached amusement. Her job at a high-powered marketing firm was everything to her. People were just pieces on a board. So her sudden, intense interest in my love life was strange. She' d never shown that much passion for anything besides a promotion.

After Olivia and I got married, Sarah and Olivia became inseparable. It was "girls' night" every other night. They went shopping, they got their nails done, they went to fancy brunch spots I' d never even heard of.

I remember joking about it once, as they were heading out the door, both of them dressed up. "You two spend more time together than I spend with either of you."

They just laughed. Sarah looped her arm through Olivia' s. "That' s because we have better taste, little brother."

That' s when I started to notice the changes in Olivia. It started with her clothes. She traded her jeans and sweaters for silk blouses and designer dresses. Her perfume changed to something I could smell from across the room. Her whole look became more polished, more expensive.

Then came the credit card bills. I was the one who paid them. The numbers kept climbing. A hundred dollars here for a brunch, five hundred there for a handbag. I started to feel a constant, low-level anxiety about money. We weren' t poor, but we weren' t rich. We couldn' t sustain this.

I tried to bring it up with Sarah one day, hoping she could talk some sense into Olivia. "Hey, do you think the spending is getting a little out of hand?"

Sarah' s face went cold. She put down her wine glass and looked at me with disappointment. "Ethan, you' re her husband. A man' s job is to provide. Are you telling me you can' t provide for your own wife? Don' t be so cheap. It' s not a good look."

I felt a hot flush of shame. She made me feel small, inadequate. So I shut up. I kept paying the bills.

Soon after, Olivia started pulling away from me in other ways. When I' d try to hug her in the kitchen, she' d stiffen. When I reached for her in bed, she' d roll over, murmuring, "I' m so tired, honey," or "I have a headache." The excuses became a wall between us.

One afternoon, a friend from college called me. "Hey, man, this is weird, but were you at The Gilded Spoon for lunch today?"

The Gilded Spoon was one of the most expensive restaurants in the city. "No, I' m at work. Why?"

"Oh. Well, I thought I saw Olivia there. She was with some older guy, gray hair, expensive suit. They looked pretty cozy."

My blood ran cold. "Are you sure it was her?"

"Pretty sure. But hey, maybe it was a business lunch or something. Don' t mind me."

I hung up the phone, my heart pounding. I confronted Olivia that night. Her face crumpled, and tears immediately welled up in her eyes.

"How could you think that, Ethan? I was with Sarah! We had lunch. Call her! Ask her!"

She was so convincing in her hurt that I felt like a monster. I did call Sarah. Her voice on the phone was like ice.

"Yes, Ethan, she was with me. I cannot believe you would accuse your own wife of something so horrible based on some gossip. You need to learn to trust her. This is your problem, not hers."

She made me feel like the villain. I apologized to Olivia, who was still crying. I held her and told her I was sorry, that I was just stressed and stupid. I buried the doubt, I buried the friend' s words, and I forced myself to trust them. I chose to be a fool.