Rain stitched the windshield into a moving mosaic, streetlights blurring into amber smears as Seattle folded into itself at dusk. I had always liked driving in weather like this. The city felt quieter, wrapped in something private. The Bluetooth in my car hummed softly, a small blue icon glowing on the dash, doing what it always did. Making life easier.
That night, it did the opposite.
I called Richard out of habit more than necessity. Fifteen years of marriage had trained me into small check-ins, into sharing the dull edges of a day. I was leaving my mother’s house earlier than planned and wanted to let him know I would be home in forty minutes, maybe less if traffic loosened.
He answered quickly. Too quickly.
“Hey, babe,” he said, breathy, like he had jogged up a flight of stairs. He used that tone whenever he wanted to sound indispensable. Busy. Needed. “I’m in the middle of something. Wrapping it up. Love you. See you soon.”
I smiled without thinking. That voice had once meant ambition. Stability. A man working hard for our future.
“Love you too,” I said. “I was thinking I’d grab dinner on the way, maybe Thai or that new—”
I assumed he had hung up. He often did, distracted, moving on to the next thing. I adjusted my grip on the steering wheel and focused on the road, on the rhythmic sweep of the wipers, on the soft percussion of rain hitting metal.
Then his voice came back.
Not the one he used with me.
“God,” he said, exhaling sharply. “She is so suffocating. I almost slipped and called her by your name again.”
My chest locked. My fingers tightened until my knuckles burned. I looked at the dashboard. The call timer was still counting upward, green numbers ticking like a quiet bomb.
