“She was looking at the bear,” Nathan corrected me. “She remembers the bear. It was mine when I was six.”

My stomach twisted.

The man I married was a stranger.

He was a respected surgeon during the day, but at night, he was pulling his sick mother through our daughter’s room.

“You are sick,” I said.

“I am thorough,” he said.

He slipped my phone into the deep pocket of his scrub pants.

“Go back to sleep, Clara,” he said.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“I have to take her back to her room,” he said.

“I am coming with you,” I said.

“No,” he said. “You’ll upset her.”

He walked toward the bedroom door.

He moved with a quiet, practiced grace that made no sound on the floorboards.

I did not stay in bed.

I waited until his shadow cleared the doorway.

Then I reached into my robe pocket.

I had my old work phone in there.

I had kept it in the drawer as a backup, and I had grabbed it before leaving the bedroom.

It was fully charged.