“Got it.” Burke nodded toward the stairs. “I’m gonna grab a shower.”

I waited a couple of minutes to go up to the bedroom, where I heard the shower running in the master bath. But I also heard Burke’s voice—it sounded as if he was on the phone.

I tiptoed toward the bathroom and pressed my ear against the closed door.

“… I love you, too.… Yup, I’m about to hop in the shower, but the water is taking forever to warm up. I can’t wait to be home from this dumb work trip.… Yeah. I know. God, I love you. I miss you so much, Goose, you have no idea…”

I felt a punch in my stomach, solid and quick, as if the wind had been knocked out of me. Carefully, I crept away from the bathroom door, my body numb with shock.

But this is all an act, one half of me justified. This is the Big Plan. Burke is acting, and he’s supposed to be leading Skye on, and he’s doing a damn good job. You should be proud of him.

But the other half of me—my gut—said otherwise. I’d spent thirty years with Burke, and I knew him, almost better than I knew myself. The different octaves of his voice and their respective meanings were deeply ingrained in me; Burke was a charmer, and I could tell when he was turning it on, spewing bullshit, and when he was being genuine. This was the latter.

Burke loved Skye. He missed her. His nickname for her was Goose. How was it all possible? Perhaps it was a midlife crisis, one in which he’d mistaken sex with a millennial for love.

Slowly, I moved down the stairs. I lowered myself onto the couch in the den, trying to stay rational.

Burke was confused. I’d sent him—willingly—into another woman’s bed. He would snap out of it, he would. Skye had somehow lured him in, with her plump, youthful skin and ribbony hair and endless money, but I was Burke’s wife, his partner of three decades. All I had to do was remind him of our love, our children, our future.

Twenty minutes later Burke came downstairs in sweats and a T-shirt, his hair dampened from the shower.

“Whatcha doin’?” He rubbed his nose. That disconnected glaze was over his eyes again, and I felt my stomach sink.

I shrugged. “Nothing. Come here.”

He hesitated, then sat beside me on the couch.

“Maggie and I are going to make your favorite chili tonight.” I turned to face him, inhaling the scent of his damp, clean skin. “But the kids won’t be here for another hour.…” I reached for him, sliding my hand down the waistband of his sweats. My job was to remind Burke that he only had one wife, and it wasn’t Skye.

For the next several minutes I let myself forget the reality that the man I’d been in love with for the better part of my life—the father of my children—had fallen for someone else. I let myself drift back to the old Burke and Heather, those two scrappy lovebirds who’d found their home in each other. As our bodies rocked into a steady, familiar rhythm, I swallowed the inevitability that Burke’s mind was somewhere else and dropped wholly into my body—my body that still wanted him. God, did it still want him.

Then it was over, and Burke got up from the couch too quickly, and it was easy to tell that he’d only done what he had out of obligation. I loathed Skye more than ever, for her bewildering, unforeseen ability to sink her claws into my husband.

On Sunday, before Burke went back to his beloved Goose, I found another private moment with him so I could ask about his progress in proposing to Skye. I gritted my teeth as I watched his face fall in response. I didn’t let him answer before reiterating the white lie I’d already told him several weeks earlier—that Hope’s second-semester tuition was overdue, and that if it wasn’t paid in full by the end of April, she wouldn’t be able to graduate. We were running out of time. Yes, our cash-flow problem was grave, but I made it sound even graver.

By the end of the conversation Burke’s face was stricken with fresh panic, just as I’d hoped. He said he’d already gotten Mr. Starling’s permission for Skye’s hand, and agreed to get the ball rolling on the engagement, and to work on opening a joint checking account with Skye so that he could start sending me money. I felt brittle and angry as I slid the diamond-and-sapphire ring off my finger and placed it in Burke’s palm. It was all part of the plan—I knew they wouldn’t actually get married—but still, the idea of Skye wearing my beloved ring sent venom through my bloodstream.

When Burke said he was happy to take a cab to the train station, I didn’t object.

“So I’ll come back in May,” he offered. “For Hope’s graduation. I’ll get her tuition paid in time, Heather. She will graduate. I can’t believe it. How did our kids grow up so fast? I guess they’re not kids anymore.”

I said nothing, attempting to lock his gaze. He glanced away, but I grabbed his hand.

“Look at me, Burke,” I pleaded, swallowing my anger. “You know how much I love you, right? Your children love you. We’re a family. Don’t forget that.”

He sighed, finally resting his eyes on mine. “I know. I just wish life could be easy, Heather.”

“It can be, Burke. It will be. Eyes on the prize, okay?”

He nodded silently. He squeezed my palm, just once, before walking out the door.

I watched from the kitchen window as his taxi pulled away, a mix of grief and fury crushing my lungs. For days, all I could think about was the phone conversation I’d overheard between Burke and Skye, and the dispassionate, empty way my husband had made love to me afterward, the lifelessness in his hands and eyes.

A few weeks later I received a text from Burke, a photo of my sapphire-and-diamond ring on Skye’s finger accompanied by the words Engaged. Opening joint account ASAP. Stay tuned.

I had to run to the bathroom and hurl at the image, but afterward I felt okay. Things were on track. Burke would find his way back to me. And Skye would get what was coming to her.

Payments from Burke started coming in in April, $3,500 every two weeks, the sight of each cash deposit quickening the current of my blood.

Despite that the Big Plan was moving forward, I couldn’t shake my resentment of Skye. I detested her, the woman who’d stolen my husband’s affection, the same woman whose tantrum over a beesting had resulted in Gus’s death almost thirty years earlier. The urge to cause her pain was thick and heavy inside me, all-encompassing.

And if anyone was in a position to maximize her suffering, to twist the knife in deep, it was me. I’d spent the better part of Skye’s life watching her from afar, studying her every move with analytical obsession. I remembered the name Max LaPointe from her tagged Facebook pictures all those years ago; for some reason I couldn’t shake the mystery of what had happened between them.

That’s why, on a quiet Tuesday near the end of March, from the midst of my own, obsessive loathing, I logged in to Julia Miller’s Facebook and crafted a message to Max LaPointe, pretending to be a potential employer vetting Skye for a tutoring position. I never knew what had happened between them, only that it clearly didn’t work out.

I wasn’t fully expecting Max to reply, but he did, and after only a couple of hours.

Sure, I know that bitch. She told insane lies about me that got me kicked out of grad school. Starling belongs in an institution.

I wrote the first email from “Max” to Skye later that night, half a bottle of red deep.

A little birdie tells me you’re engaged. That poor, poor guy.

I figured that ought to give her a good scare. Maybe it would even make her OCD flare up, in front of Burke, I hoped. Soon enough my husband would wake up from his trance and remember that Skye was a mental patient, not the kind of girl he could ever actually love.