It was a quiet Sunday afternoon when everything changed, the kind of slow day when the house feels peaceful and nothing in the world seems urgent. My husband Michael had stepped outside to wash the car while I stayed inside folding laundry at the kitchen table, half watching the sunlight move slowly across the floor. His phone had been left on the counter beside me, vibrating softly every few minutes with notifications from work, friends, or the usual group chats that people collect after decades of adulthood.
Normally I never touched it. After twenty-eight years of marriage, there had never been a reason to question anything.
