Which brings me to today. Right now, actually. I’m typing this out from my kitchen, and I can see Dale through the window at the grill. He’s making burgers. Whistling. He’s got on that silly apron, the one that says “Kiss the Cook.” About twenty minutes ago his phone buzzed on the counter and I read it before I even thought about it. From Kelsey. Three little words. “Can’t wait for October.”

So now I know what October’s really for. Not our anniversary. Hers.

The thing is, the papers are already signed. They’ve been sitting in Donna’s safe for a week now. My lawyer answers her phone inside the hour, any hour of the day. I have spent twelve weeks deciding one thing, and it was never whether I was leaving him. It was when. I keep going back and forth on it. His company Christmas party, in front of all those people in their nice clothes. Or Sunday dinner at his mother’s table, where that woman has looked at me like I wasn’t quite good enough for thirty years. I want him to find out I know everything at the very same second he finds out I know the last thing too.

Because here’s what the digging turned up. That hard thing I told you about. While I was opening my little two-hundred-dollar account across town, Dale had already opened one of his own. Eight months ago. Not in his name. In his name and Kelsey’s, side by side. And he’d been quietly moving our money into it the whole entire time. The cabin my daddy paid to build. He’d already borrowed against it without telling me. Forty-one thousand dollars, sitting in an account with that girl’s name right next to his.

He’s flipping the burgers now. Still whistling that same little tune. He thinks October is going to be the best month of his life.

And he has no earthly idea that I’ve known since the pot roast, that there’s a folder in Donna’s closet with his whole life photocopied inside it, and that the only thing I’ve got left to decide is which dinner table I’m going to set it all down on.

I haven’t told a single soul but you. He’s calling me out to the patio now.

I think I’ll have a burger first.