She crossed the kitchen in three quick strides and snatched up the phone.

There it was.

Lisa: I shouldn’t have stayed so long.
Daniel: I know. I miss last night already.

Emily stared until the words blurred together. Her younger sister, Lisa Monroe, had been at their house the night before for dinner. She had left around ten. Daniel had offered to walk her to her car in the rain.

Emily hadn’t questioned it.

Upstairs, the shower turned off.

Noah whispered, “Mom?”

She locked the phone and set it down carefully, as if it might explode. “Go to your room,” she said.

“But—”

“Now.”

By the time Daniel came downstairs in a gray T-shirt, drying his hair with a towel, Emily stood in the middle of the kitchen holding the phone. He took one look at her face and froze.

“What happened?”

She turned the screen toward him. “You tell me.”

For a split second, guilt flashed openly across his face. Then came the defensive blink, the inhale, the rehearsed denial. “It’s not what you think.”

The phrase struck her harder than the message itself—not for its meaning, but for how predictably it came.

“Really?” Emily said, her voice thin and cold. “Then explain it.”

Daniel rubbed the back of his neck. “Lisa was upset last night. We talked. That’s all.”

Emily let out a short, fractured laugh. “So when exactly do you text my sister that you miss her? After your heartfelt counseling session?”

He stepped toward her. “Emily, just listen—”

She moved back. “Did you sleep with her?”

He hesitated.

That was all the answer she needed.

Emily grabbed her keys and drove straight to Lisa’s townhouse twenty minutes away, her hands trembling so badly she nearly missed two turns. Lisa opened the door wearing sweatpants and an old college sweatshirt, her eyes widening the second she saw Emily.

“Em—”

“Did you sleep with my husband?”

Lisa’s mouth quivered. For a moment, Emily saw hope flicker—hope that Lisa might deny it, laugh it off, call it absurd. Instead, Lisa covered her mouth and started crying.

“One word,” Emily said. “Yes or no.”

Lisa whispered, “Sorry.”

Something inside Emily went completely still.

She turned to leave, then paused when she noticed a framed ultrasound photo on the hallway table, partly hidden under a pile of unopened mail. Beneath it sat a sticky note in Daniel’s handwriting.

We’ll tell her soon.