My husband asked me to let my sister be his “wife” for one night. He said it like he was asking me to pass the salt.

Kelsey examined her manicure and told me that I didn’t exactly own a meet-cute story as if it were a piece of communal property. They sat there and practiced the details of our rooftop proposal and our first trip to the coast while I watched from the armchair.

“It was a French restaurant, not an Italian one,” I corrected them and Troy rolled his eyes at my insistence on accuracy. He mocked my voice and told Kelsey that I was just being my usual intense self before suggesting I go upstairs to do some work.

I walked toward the stairs but stopped when I heard their voices drop into a private and intimate register that was not meant for me. I looked through the banister and saw Troy brushing his thumb against Kelsey’s cheek in a way he hadn’t touched me in years.

They were about to kiss in the house I owned when a floorboard creaked under my foot and they jerked apart with guilty expressions. Troy claimed they were just practicing affection for the reunion and I nodded as if I actually believed his pathetic lie.

I didn’t confront them then because I knew from years in the courtroom that you never cross-examine a witness until you have all the evidence. I waited until Kelsey left and then I blocked Troy from entering our bedroom with a firm hand on the doorframe.

“Why did you touch her like that,” I demanded and he told me I was being insane and obsessed with control. He looked me in the eye and denied sleeping with her but his gaze flickered away at the last second and confirmed my worst fears.

He told me that my interrogation was the reason our marriage was dead and I realized he was no longer even trying to protect the truth. I told him to sleep on the couch and he left with a pillow while muttering about how difficult I was to live with.

I drove to Kelsey’s apartment in the middle of the night and knocked on her door until she was forced to face me. The apartment smelled like the expensive candles I had bought her and the takeout food she could not afford on her own.

“How long have you been sleeping with him,” I asked and she tried to play the victim until I mentioned the specific birthmark on Troy’s hip. Her silence was the only confession I needed to confirm that my life had been a theater of lies for months.