It was Megan. Our daughter.

She’d been the one holding the camera. She was standing in that kitchen, in on the whole thing, taking the picture while her father grinned with that woman in my robe.

My Megan, who’d been “so busy lately.” Who hadn’t come for Sunday dinner in two months. Who went quiet on the phone every single time I asked what was new with her. She knew. She’d known the whole time. She stood in my kitchen and raised that phone and pressed the button.

I drove home with the key still in my hand. I never did put it back in my purse. I just held onto it the whole way home, so hard it left a little mark in my palm. Frank’s coat was still hanging by the door where I’d found it that morning. I sat at the kitchen table, our kitchen, the one in the picture, and I waited for the sound of his car.

He came in at six like always. Kissed the air near my cheek. “Checking back in,” he said, same as forty-one years of suppers. I put the brass key down on the table between us and slid it across to him. He looked at it, and his whole face just sort of came apart, slow, like he’d always known this night was coming and had just hoped it’d be some other night.

I didn’t scream. I thought I would, but I didn’t have it in me. The only thing I said was the only thing I wanted to know. “Was Megan there.” It wasn’t even a question, really. He opened his mouth and then he closed it, and that was my answer.

I’ve been staying at my sister’s a few days now. Frank calls.

Megan hasn’t. That’s the part I keep turning over at night, the way I used to turn that key. Not the woman in my robe. Not the mattress on the floor. My own girl, with the phone up, pressing the button. I braided that hair for eighteen years and I still can’t make myself dial her number. I just keep waiting for it to ring.