Chapter 1

After I was diagnosed with delusional disorder, I kept seeing images of my wife cheating on me.

My psychiatrist told me to avoid intimacy for a while.

To ease the symptoms, I started sleeping in a separate room.

Three years later, a doctor told me I'd recovered.

I went home to share the good news, only to find my wife tangled up with my closest friend on the living room couch.

I assumed the delusions were back.

As I turned toward the bedroom, my friend asked in a low, hoarse voice, "Does it get you off more, knowing Declan's right here?

"Aren't you afraid he'll file for divorce?"

Sabrina laughed, contemptuous.

"We'll tell him the delusions are back. It wouldn't be the first time."

Standing a few feet away, I felt like I'd dropped through the ice.

Chapter 1

The sounds from the living room got louder.

Every filthy word went into my chest like a needle.

My first instinct was to run, and my foot caught a chair.

The crash brought both their heads around.

"When did you get home?"

Sabrina asked it with a frown.

I didn't answer her. I talked past her, to myself.

"It must be starting again. Otherwise Bree would never do something this shameless."

"She isn't that kind of woman."

I said it, ignored the look on her face, and turned toward the bedroom.

"I need my pills. It's getting worse."

I was still muttering when I shut the door.

The second it clicked, I slid down the back of it to the floor.

My hand was still balled up in my pocket.

My nails were buried in my palm.

When I opened it, there were four little crescent cuts in the skin.

For as long as we'd been married, Sabrina and I were the couple our friends held up as an example.

After the diagnosis, she never left my side.

I'd always believed marrying her was the luckiest thing that ever happened to me.

Everett Sloan had been my closest friend for more than twenty years.

He was also the psychiatrist treating me.

I thought about the look on the other doctor's face after he finished the evaluation.

No wonder it took him two appointments to tell me I could stop the medication.

I picked up the bottle off the nightstand and dropped it into my bag.

The noise outside started up again, in fits and starts.

With no expression on my face, I ordered a set of indoor security cameras on my phone.

Then I called a lawyer.

The living room finally went quiet that night.

The rain outside picked up until it was coming down hard.

I sat by the window and let the water hit me.

It was below freezing, and I couldn't feel the cold at all.

Inside me there was just a wide, empty stretch where something used to be.

I don't know how long it was before the door opened.

Sabrina came in with her handbag on her arm, doing an impression of a woman who'd just gotten off work.

I didn't turn around, and I didn't get up to meet her the way I always had.

She didn't seem to notice.

She changed, washed up, and came over to me.

"Dec, what's wrong?"

She asked it carefully, like she was afraid of setting me off.

I looked back at her and said nothing.

The calm on my face made her tense up immediately.

"Dec, did you see something again?

"None of it's real. Let me get your pills."

All that worry in her voice almost made me laugh.

That act had fooled me for years.

Looking at her closely now, I could see the mockery sitting underneath the concern in her eyes.

When I didn't react, Sabrina turned straight for the medicine cabinet.

"Don't. I'm fine."

I hadn't spoken in so long that my voice came out rough.

She studied me, suspicious.

"Dec, don't try to tough it out. I'm not going anywhere."

Chapter 2

I shook my head.

"I saw another doctor this afternoon."

Sabrina's face changed on the spot.

Anxiety crept into her voice.

"What doctor? Why?"

I turned the question back on her, like I didn't follow.

"What kind of doctor would I be seeing?"

She knew perfectly well that Everett had been with her all afternoon.

But she recovered fast and rearranged her expression into something even more concerned.

"I'm just worried about you. Why didn't you tell me you were going?

"I'd have taken the day off and gone with you. In your condition, what am I supposed to do if something happens while you're out there alone?"

She looked entirely devoted to my wellbeing.

That act had trained me to blame myself for years.

I'd believed I wasn't good enough, that my illness had put her through hell.

So I'd worked at being better to her, constantly.

Now I understood the whole thing was a con.

Something hot and furious came up through my chest.

I held it down and kept my voice level.

"He said there's nothing wrong with me."

The sentence landed in her like a bomb.

Her voice started to shake.

"What did you say?"

I watched the panic move across her face.

It was the same face she'd worn the day we met.

Eight years ago, in the middle of winter, I'd finished working late and walked out of my office building.

Sabrina, out delivering food on an electric scooter, clipped me and put me on the ground.

She'd looked exactly this frightened then.

She apologized over and over and asked if I needed a hospital.

I got up, brushed the grit off my coat, and told her I was fine.

She kept apologizing.

"My delivery's already late and I didn't see you. Can we trade numbers? Text me if anything starts hurting."

She insisted, so we traded numbers.

Then I forgot about it.

A week later, I saw her outside my building again.

A customer was in her face, screaming at her because the food was late.

She looked about ready to cry.

I couldn't stand watching it, so I stepped in.

After that, she started messaging me all the time.

The more I learned about her, the harder I fell for a woman who'd come through a rough childhood without losing any of her optimism.

The day I told her how I felt, she got that frightened look again.

She only said yes after I'd reassured her a dozen times.

I thought we'd have a quiet, ordinary, happy life.

I never imagined it would end like this.

Sabrina kept pushing until my thoughts came back into the room.

Looking at the woman I'd loved for eight years, I remembered something my mother used to say.

"People who throw away a good heart end up choking on it."

My silence started to wear on her.

She began to doubt whether I'd really seen anyone at all.

"Dec, are you having an episode?

"Are you fighting the treatment again?"

She turned for the medicine cabinet.

I watched her do it like it was her right, and I smiled at the floor.

Three years of being told I had delusional disorder, and even Sabrina had come to treat the label as settled fact.

She brought me a pill and stood there until she was satisfied I'd swallowed it.

Only then did she pick up the phone that had been ringing and ringing.

The screen flashed for a second.

I got a clear look at the lock screen.

It was a photo of her and Everett.

They'd gotten careless enough to leave the truth sitting in plain sight.

"Hey, Everett..."

Her voice had a warmth and a sweetness in it I hadn't heard in years.

I'd assumed time had worn down what was between us.

That assumption made me try harder for her.

She'd already given all of it to someone else.

Chapter 3

The shy look on her face almost made me demand an explanation.

If she'd just told me straight out that she loved someone else, I'd have let her go and wished her well.

Instead, every inch I'd given her over the years had bought me nothing but this.

When she turned away to keep talking, I spat the pill into my hand.

Her laughter drifted in from the hall in pieces.

I expected the grief to flatten me.

Instead I felt strangely calm.

Sometimes it only takes a second to be done.

I was drifting off when something cold touched my back.

I sat straight up.

Sabrina yelped.

"Ah!"

I frowned.

"What are you doing in here?"

She wasn't offended. She put her arms around me from behind.

"Dec, it's been so long since we..."

Once, that would have wiped every other thought out of my head.

Now all I could see was her and Everett that afternoon.

My stomach turned over.

I twisted away and gagged.

Her face soured.

"What's that supposed to mean, Declan? Is there another woman?

"Do I disgust you now?"

The nerve of it made me laugh out loud.

The laugh made her furious.

"Declan..."

I cut her off.

"Bree, don't read into it. The pills just upset my stomach."

She was still frowning.

I reached out like I was going to pull her in.

At the last second I just patted her shoulder.

I kept my voice gentle.

"Don't worry about it. I'm tired. Go on back to your room."

The words surprised me on the way out.

Every time I'd ever raised the subject, she'd put me off with some version of the same excuse.

Once a month, and she treated it like a chore to get through fast.

She looked at me, suspicious.

She clearly couldn't work out why I'd said no.

I didn't explain.

I turned over and lay down.

I ignored her face darkening beside me.

I slept without dreaming.

The next morning I left for work before she was up.

I'd barely walked into the office when my lawyer messaged me.

Diane Mercer recommended I hire a licensed investigator to gather evidence that would actually hold up.

I thought it over.

Then I ordered a few things online.

For the next several days I acted like nothing had happened and went on with Sabrina the way I always had.

I just kept finding reasons not to touch her.

She filed every change away as another intermittent episode.

The diagnosis they'd invented had become her explanation for everything I did.

She seemed to have forgotten it was only a curtain she and Everett had hung.

Because I pretended not to see, they got bolder.

More than once I came home to find Everett putting his shirt back on in my living room.

He'd say hello without a trace of embarrassment.

That coming weekend was my father's seventieth birthday.

He called the day before to remind me to invite Everett to dinner.

He wanted to thank him properly.

I felt my mouth twist.

Thank Everett?

For helping Sabrina turn my life into this?

I got up early that morning, showered, and headed out.

It took a lap around the parking garage before I realized my car was gone.

My mother kept calling to hurry me along, so I just took a rideshare.

On the way I called Sabrina a few times. She never picked up.

My texts went out and nothing came back.

I didn't think much of it.

When I got to my parents' place, they both asked where Sabrina and Everett were.

I made up an excuse.

My mother scolded me over it, convinced I hadn't taken the invitation seriously.

Chapter 4

Every relative had arrived and dinner was on the table, and Sabrina still hadn't shown up.

I called her a few more times because I didn't know what else to do.

She never answered.

By the time my father's birthday was over, my mind was made up: I was filing.

Dinner had barely started when the doorbell rang.

Sabrina and Everett were standing outside.

"Sabrina, Everett, what a coincidence, the two of you arriving together..."

My mother stopped mid-sentence.

She'd spotted the two Clearford police officers behind them.

"What's this about?"

There was fear in her voice.

Sabrina arranged her face into reluctance and took her time answering.

"Mom... they're here for Declan."

The officers came past them and up to me.

One showed his badge and spoke like a man reading off a form.

"Mr. Foster, we need to ask you about a traffic collision.

"Around three yesterday morning, a driver hit a pedestrian on Northvale Road and left the scene. The vehicle is registered to you."

Before I could get a word out, Sabrina jumped in.

"Dec, don't run from this. I watched you drive off last night."

Everett backed her up immediately.

"Dec, I know you're going to say you didn't do it, but you may have been in the middle of an episode. You wouldn't remember.

"Sabrina and I aren't going anywhere. Don't be scared."

Before I'd said anything at all, the two of them had made me the drunk driver.

The relatives started murmuring.

"That's awful. Runs a man down and stands there like nothing happened."

"I heard he had psychiatric problems. His parents kept saying he didn't."

My mother went paler with every comment.

My father came over with his face like a storm.

"Declan, I taught you since you were a boy that when you're wrong, you own it. I never thought I'd see this."

I looked at the disappointment sitting on him.

If I didn't fix this, my parents would carry the shame in front of these people for the rest of their lives.

Sabrina and Everett stood behind the officers wearing matching expressions of grief on my behalf.

As I looked away, she and I held each other's eyes for three seconds.

Maybe my look was too cold.

Something like panic went across her face.

I let it go and got my thoughts in order.

Then I calmly asked the officers whether they had any evidence that I was the one driving.

One of them pulled up a video on his phone.

The footage appeared to show me driving my car out at three in the morning.

"Where did this come from?"

I laughed without any humor in it.

Before the officer could answer, Everett spoke too fast.

"It's from the camera inside your car. Stop fighting it, Dec."

That certainty of his made me smile, cold.

"There's a camera in my car? When was it put in, and why was I never told?"

Everett hadn't expected me to be this calm.

His composure slipped for a second.

Sabrina supplied the answer instantly.

"We installed it because we were afraid of what you might do during an episode."

Every sentence they'd offered up as concern since walking in had been aimed at nailing the hit-and-run to me.

I stopped looking at either of them and spoke directly to the officer.

"I have evidence that I wasn't the driver. I'd like you to look at it."

Sabrina and Everett went very still.

For the first time, it seemed to occur to them that this could come apart.