I went to my son’s apartment with a duplicate key, convinced I was going to catch my daughter-in-law with another man. “Today this lie ends,” I thought before opening the bedroom door. But the woman inside wasn’t her: beside a bottle of champagne, I found my own husband after 32 years of marriage… and what I heard next was even worse.

Bernard remains involved with Piper, according to the last update Rosalind received through a mutual acquaintance, though the relationship, stripped of the secrecy and stolen retirement funds that once fueled its more indulgent gestures, has apparently settled into something considerably more modest than the champagne-and-silk-robe afternoons Rosalind once walked in on.

I think about that afternoon often, Rosalind told a close friend recently, over coffee in her new condo’s small, sun-filled kitchen. I went there so certain I was about to catch someone else’s betrayal. I never once considered I might actually be walking into my own.