“You’re comfortable where you are.”

Sometimes:

“Why ruin a good thing?”

Four months earlier, Carl had announced in front of half the company that I had never been anything more than his housekeeper.

Now that same company wanted me to manage an entire department.

I said yes.

A few weeks later, Carl came to the house for the last of his belongings.

We stood in the kitchen where we had raised our children and eaten thousands of ordinary dinners.

He looked around.

“You seem different.”

“I am.”

He nodded.

“I never meant for everything to happen the way it did.”

And strangely enough, I believed him.

Carl had wanted a different life.

What he hadn’t wanted was the painful part where you honestly end the life you already have.

So he lied.

Then he lied again.

And again.

Eventually, he created so many different versions of reality that they could no longer exist in the same room.

I looked at him.

“You didn’t leave me that night.”

He frowned.

“What?”

“You left months before the party. That night was simply the first time you were honest about it.”

Carl looked down.

Then he picked up his boxes.

And left.

The following Monday, I walked into my new office.

There was a cheap plastic plaque sitting on my desk.

Megan had bought it as a joke.

It said: