I stare at that condom wrapper, confirming everything I believed to be true.

My husband is having an affair with Cassidy Knudsen.

I envision the two of them in ostentatious hotels in San Francisco, New York City and now Denver, their bodies coalescing between Egyptian cotton sheets. I see them in Chris’s uninhabited office during nonbusiness hours, and me, stupidly falling for another cover story: working on an offering memorandum or writing a prospectus, doing due diligence on one company or another.

These burdens—the long hours, the endless business trips—were his alibi, his attempt to camouflage a secret liaison with another woman.

My head spins, imagining Chris, in the kitchen, humbly admitting that Cassidy Knudsen would be joining him on his last trip. I picture the two of them together, later on in their hotel room, laughing about it, laughing about how piqued I’d been to discover that she’d be there. I picture the two of them taking pleasure in my unease and insecurity, in my jealousy.

It’s a business trip, Chris had said. Strictly business.

And yet...

I put it all together in my head: the unanswered phone call, the contraceptive in the pocket of Chris’s work pants. The proof, finally, that I’ve longed for for so long.

I cross the bedroom to the dresser and remove from the top drawer various items that I lay across the bed: a set of matching underwear—lace bra and panties—in a pale shade of pink.

I stare at those items, long and hard, knowing what needs to be done to settle the score.

WILLOW

Of course everything I told Louise Flores was not the truth.

She had me write it all down, in my own words, on a fresh sheet of notebook paper. She paced the room, her heels clicking on the concrete floors, while I wrote it all down, about the chef’s knife, and Joseph with his gaping eyes. I even made up a thing or two about Miriam, how she was asleep when I went into the room, but I did her in nonetheless, just because I could.

She gazes at me, shaking her head and says, “You’re just lucky you’re a juvenile, Claire. Do you have any idea what would happen to you if you were tried as an adult?”

I shrug my shoulders and say, “There’s no death penalty in Illinois.”

She stops her pacing all of a sudden and peers over a shoulder at me.

“But you didn’t commit the crime in Illinois, Claire,” she says. “You were in Nebraska,” where I know good and well murderers can be put to death by lethal injection.

Especially those over eighteen, those who commit murders that are willful and premeditated.

Like waiting until someone is asleep before creeping into their room with a knife.

I didn’t want Matthew to get in any trouble. ’Cause I knew that what he did, he did for me. Never did I stop thinking of Matthew, not one day since I left. I thought about him every single day, and at night, when I lay down on the bed, I thought of him and cried, quiet-like so Mrs. Wood and Mr. Wood wouldn’t hear. I wondered where he was. Wondered if he was okay.

When she’s got it all, the whole grand confession in writing and on tape, she tells the guard to bring me back to my room where Diva sits on the floor and sings, tapping her long vermillion fingernails against the bars of our cage for a percussion effect though someone screams at her to shut up. I ignore her interrogation—Where have you been all day?—and climb onto my bunk, pulling a thin white sheet over me, all the way up over my head.

I close my eyes and remember that night, the things I didn’t tell Ms. Flores.

HEIDI

Beside me, on the bed, lay a set of matching underwear, lace bra and panties, in a pale shade of pink. I slip into them and drift to the open closet doors, reaching deep inside. In the back I find what I’m looking for, hung from a department store hanger, still covered in plastic sheeting, a knot tied at its base. Never worn. I loosen the knot and gently lift the plastic from the dress. Dropping it to the floor, I remember the day I made the purchase, some seven months ago, the day I called Chris’s favorite steakhouse in the old, refurbished brownstone on Ontario Street, and made reservations for a quieter table away from the bar, the very one where Chris proposed to me. I’d planned for Zoe to stay with Jennifer and Taylor, had left work early to get my hair done, a side-swept chignon to partner with the new dress, a pair of black pumps with a kitten heel.

I release the dress from its hanger, remembering how Chris had called before I ever had a chance to wear it, griping about some last-minute task, and in the background, there was her voice—Cassidy’s—beckoning my husband, stealing him away from our anniversary date.

“I’ll make it up to you,” he’d promised, his disappointment diluted over the phone, as if maybe, just maybe, he didn’t care at all, “Soon.”

I run my fingers over the dress, a crepe shift dress with buttons up the back, black. I drape it over my head, letting it slide down, over the pink bra and panties, and then stare at my reflection in the full-length mirror. I remember that October night, the night of our anniversary, I remember that it was Graham who had come over instead, beckoned by the sound of the TV on a night he knew I shouldn’t be home. He stood in the doorway, sympathy carpeting his face, knowing, without my needing to tell him, what had happened: me, in a robe and slippers in place of the little black dress, my hair dazzling in its side-swept chignon, The Price Is Right on the TV. A frozen TV dinner baking in the oven.

“He doesn’t deserve you,” was all he said, and then, in a throwback to long lost college days, we played a round of century club with Chris’s adored pale ales, until we were drunk and bloated and my memories of being stood up by my work-obsessed husband had become hazy and opaque. I passed out on the sofa, waking the next morning to empty bottles of beer—over a dozen of them strewn upon the coffee table and floor—a vase of flowers set at their center, Chris’s weak attempt at a pardon.

He was out the door before I awoke.

I trace my eyes in a dark liner, sweeping a smoky shadow across the lids. I smear Bordeaux lipstick onto my lips and smack them together, wiping away the excess with a tissue. I tie my hair into a messy knot on the top of my head, sad in comparison to that beautiful sixty-dollar chignon, I think, reaching into the depths of the closet for the box containing the black pumps with their kitten heels. I roll a pair of nylons up my legs and slip into the heels, standing before the mirror.

I pass by the baby, sound asleep on the pink fleece blanket, on the floor. I watch her for a short time, refusing to stay too long and divert my course. I watch to make sure she is asleep, that she will not notice my absence, and then I walk into the hallway and gently close the door.

I don’t take the time to catch my breath; I refuse to slow down and think.

Graham opens the door before my knuckles rap for a second time. There he stands, impeccable and smiling, in a pair of jeans and an undershirt. He takes in the dress and hair, the overblown makeup, eyeing me from top to bottom. “Ooh la la,” he says as I reach back and begin to unfasten the buttons from my dress. His laptop sits on the tufted sofa cushions, abandoned; Nina Simone warbles throughout the room.

“What are you...?” Graham starts, leading me inside and closing the door. I lift that dress up over my head, exposing the pale pink beneath. His eyes fall to the pink, to the lace, getting lost long enough to affirm that Chris’s perception of Graham is far from true.

“You don’t want to do this,” he says to me, but I say that I do.

I step toward him, taking in the paragon, the ideal that is Graham, letting his warm hands wander across my midriff, wrapping around to the small of my back.