That evening I had come home early from a job near University City because a subcontractor had delayed a delivery of custom window frames. I was supposed to use the unexpected hours to review invoices, replace a loose kitchen drawer pull, and maybe make dinner. The drawer pull had been wobbling for months. Every time I promised to fix it, Sabrina made a joke about living with a contractor who never finished anything at home.
She had been standing in front of the hallway mirror when I arrived, fastening the pearl earrings I had given her for our anniversary. She wore dark trousers, a blue silk blouse, and heels that clicked against the hardwood in a familiar rhythm. Her phone was facedown on the narrow table beneath the mirror. A small overnight cosmetics bag sat near her purse, though I did not notice its significance until later.
"You're home early," she said, smiling without turning all the way toward me.
"Window frames won't be here until Thursday." I kissed the back of her head. "You want me to make something before you go?"
"Can't. Client dinner in Center City." She adjusted an earring and looked at her reflection. "Don't wait up. This one might run late."
I had heard some version of that sentence for months. Late dinner. Late strategy session. Late call with a client on the West Coast. Sometimes she came home after midnight carrying the faint scent of unfamiliar perfume and expensive restaurant kitchens. When I asked about it, she told me she was tired and accused me of making a demanding job harder.
Sabrina was a senior client partnerships director at Ellison & Pike, a consulting firm that liked photographs of glass towers and the phrase transformational growth. She was good at her work. She could remember names after a single introduction, could make a nervous executive believe he was the most interesting person in the room, and could sell a complicated idea without sounding as though she were selling anything at all. I had always admired that skill. In the years before she joined the firm, I had seen how much work she put into earning it.
Colin Mercer was the firm's vice president of business development. I had met him at two holiday parties and once at a fundraiser, where he had congratulated me on restoring an old theater marquee and immediately turned the conversation back to himself. He had an expensive watch, a practiced handshake, and the mild impatience of a man who expected his own stories to be better than yours. I knew he was married. His wife and teenage son appeared in photographs on the company's website, smiling beneath the soft glow of Christmas lights.
None of that had seemed important when Sabrina put her hand against my chest and said, "I'll call when I'm on my way home."