Looking back, I can see how easily Tyler learned to depend on that habit.
He knew I would ask questions, but he also knew I would eventually stop.
He knew I would be hurt, but he assumed I would recover without demanding anything from him.
He had mistaken my willingness to forgive for an inability to leave.
And I had helped him make that mistake.
The perfume was not the first suspicious thing I had noticed.
Two weeks earlier, a credit card statement had arrived showing a charge from an expensive downtown steakhouse.
The restaurant was one of those places Tyler and I had discussed visiting for our anniversary. It was the kind of restaurant where a simple dinner could cost more than our usual weekly groceries.
Yet the charge appeared on a night when Tyler had told me he was working late.
I remembered standing in the kitchen with the statement in my hand when he walked in.
