As I called my husband from labor, he snapped: 'Handle it yourself, stop being so dramatic!' and left for his mom's birthday.

I came home on a Wednesday.

Rowan carried the car seat.

He held the door.

He had bought flowers — yellow ones, in a vase on the kitchen table — and there was a new mobile hanging above the bassinet in the nursery, the kind with small wooden stars that turned slowly in the air.

"I put it together last night," he said, standing in the doorway of the nursery.

"Took me two hours.

The instructions were in three languages and none of them were helpful."

He laughed.

I smiled.

"It's beautiful," I said.

And it was.

That was the hardest part.

Dad called that afternoon while Rowan was at the grocery store.

"How are you?" he asked.

"I found seventeen charges," I said.

"Fourteen months of contact.

Her name is Cara Finch."

A long silence.

"What do you need?" he said.

"Nothing yet.

I need to know how deep it goes before I move."

"Phoebe." His voice was careful.

"You don't have to handle this alone."

"I'm not handling it alone," I said.

"I'm handling it correctly."

He was quiet for a moment.

"Your mother used to say that."

"I know," I said.

"She taught me."

After I hung up, I sat at the kitchen table with my laptop and a cup of tea that went cold before I touched it.

I had requested Rowan's full phone records through the billing account — a process he had never thought to restrict because he had never imagined I would look.

The records arrived in my email at 2:14 p.m.

Cara Finch had called him forty-three times in fourteen months.

He had called her sixty-one times.

The pattern was clear — long calls on weekday afternoons, short calls late at night, a cluster of calls the week I had my twenty-week ultrasound, and then a gap of three weeks, and then the calls resumed.

The gap of three weeks was when I had told him the baby was a boy.

He had cried.

I had held him while he cried.

I had thought it was joy.

I closed the laptop when I heard his car in the driveway.

He came in carrying two bags of groceries and a bunch of grapes he knew I liked.

"Thought you might be hungry," he said.

"Thank you," I said.

He put the groceries away.

He made dinner.

He asked if Leo had slept.

He told me about a podcast he had listened to on the drive.

He was attentive and warm and present in a way that would have made me feel loved six months ago.

Now I watched his hands.

The way they moved.

The way he checked his phone once, quickly, when he thought I was looking at Leo.

After dinner, while he was washing up, I said: "Who is Cara Finch?"

The plate in his hand didn't break.

But his grip on it changed.

"What?" he said.

"Cara Finch.

The property manager in Dellwood.

She called you three times while you were at the hospital on Monday."

He set the plate down.

He turned around slowly.

"Where did you hear that name?"

"From the billing account," I said.

"The one I've managed for three years."

His face went through several things in quick succession.

Surprise.

Then something that looked almost like anger — at being caught, not at himself.

Then the careful settling that men do when they decide to try a different door.

"She's a contact," he said.

"For a property I've been looking at.

An investment."

"An investment."

"Yes.

I was going to tell you.

I wanted it to be a surprise."

"Sixty-one calls in fourteen months," I said.

"Is that normal for a property investment?"

The careful look cracked at the edges.

"You've been going through my records."

"Our records," I said.

"My name is on the account."

He pulled out a chair and sat down.

He put both hands flat on the table.

He looked at me the way people look when they are trying to decide how much truth they can afford.

"It's not what you think," he said.

"Then tell me what it is."

"It's complicated."

"I'm a forensic accountant, Rowan.

Complicated is what I do."

He said nothing.

Leo cried from the nursery.

I stood up, and Rowan reached out and touched my wrist.

"Phoebe.

Let me explain."

I looked at his hand on my wrist.

"You have until Leo falls back asleep," I said.

I walked to the nursery.

I picked up my son.

I stood at the window with him until he quieted, and I looked out at the street below, and I thought about the seventeen charges, the sixty-one calls, the gap of three weeks when I had held a crying man and believed he was happy.

When I came back to the kitchen, Rowan was on his phone.

He ended the call the moment he saw me.

"Who was that?" I said.

"My brother," he said.

His brother lived in Edinburgh.