The afternoon light slanted through the bedroom window, golden and gentle, painting everything in honey-colored lies. Dust motes danced in the beam. I watched them float, suspended, and thought, absurdly, Isn’t that beautiful?

Then I saw them.

My husband, Logan, forty-six years old, graying at the temples in that distinguished way that made me fall in love with him at a dinner party nineteen years ago. His back was to me, the shoulders I’d massaged countless nights when work stress knotted his muscles, the skin I’d traced in the dark.