Editors’ Note: this story depicts emotionally difficult subject matter. Readers sensitive to topics of domestic violence and infant loss are advised before reading.

It was a Friday night after a high school football game the first time I was afraid of Edward. We’d been matched up as board game partners at a mutual friend’s house ten months before, after briefly meeting in church. His eyes were the first thing I noticed about him while we dominated as Password partners. They were a startling electric blue that I imagined fell somewhere between “B” and “V” on the ROYGBIV scale of the color spectrum−more Halls Mentho-Lyptus Drops,

Collecting Ninety-Two Years of Wisdom

“The silver Swan, who living had no Note, when Death approached,

unlocked her silent throat.” –Orlando Gibbons

It’s some night we’re fighting—or, maybe it’s after a bite-sized disagreement (just a morsel of our routine arguments, just a crumb of our crumbling marriage)—when Husband asks, “Do you hate me because you think I’m like your father?”

I am seated on the hard chair in the therapist’s office with my then-husband to my left. The therapist leans back against his own chair, relaxed, taking notes. My husband leans back comfortably as well. I fidget incessantly from the left to the right, twisting my wedding rings around my finger repeatedly while he speaks loudly and clearly with ease. It is our first appointment, and we discuss the affair I know he is having. But in this office, it is not an affair. Platonic friendship is the chosen narrative here. I cry when I explain why I cannot swallow that story.