But choice without boundaries becomes blindness.
And I had been choosing blindness because it felt less humiliating than being right.
At 12:17 a.m., sitting in my car under the Sandersons’ maple tree, I stopped choosing it.
I thought about the spare key under the stone planter.
That stupid, suburban detail.
Caleb put it there because he said emergencies happened, and at the time I found it sweet. A hidden key meant we had a home stable enough to return to, a porch nice enough for a planter, a life ordinary enough to need contingency plans. Last fall, when Tessa made a show of locking herself out, I had lifted the stone planter and shown her.
“We keep one here,” I said. “Just in case. Don’t tell anyone.”
She laughed. “Your secret’s safe.”
Now I wondered how many times she had used our secret to enter my house before I got home from work.
The worst part was not even the physical closeness on the couch, though that image was already burned into me. It was the ease. The comfort. The blanket tucked up. The wineglasses. The TV left on low. That scene did not happen the first time someone crossed a line.
That scene happens after a line has been crossed enough times to become furniture.