Olivia blinked. The woman doing her feet was waiting, gesturing at the wall of polish.
She scanned the rows of bottles without really seeing them. Pinks, reds, neutrals. All the safe choices she'd been making for years. Then her eyes landed on a bottle in the corner.
A bright blue. Electric, almost cobalt. She'd picked it up once at a salon back home, and Dan had made a face. That's a little much, isn't it? She'd put it back and gotten the pale pink instead.
"That one," she said. "Same for both."
When her feet were done, they moved her to a table to finish drying her toes and complete the manicure. She sat there watching the blue go on her fingernails, one hand and then the other, while couples walked past the window outside and the renovation show played silently above her.
Outside, twenty minutes later, she stood on the sidewalk with her nails still tacky and her phone in her hand. She didn't remember pulling it out.
Olivia dialed Dan's number.
He answered on the second ring, cheerful and oblivious. "Hey, babe. I was just thinking about you. How's the trip going?"
Olivia let him talk. Let him ask about the weather, the house, whether the kids were having fun. He sounded normal. Sounded like the man she'd been married to for seventeen years, the father of her children, the person she was supposed to be saving this marriage for.
"Lily told me something the other night," she said when he'd run out of pleasantries.
A pause. "What?"
"She saw you. In January. Outside the house." Olivia's voice was steady, steadier than she felt. "With Rachel. At two in the morning."
The silence stretched. She could hear him breathing, could almost see him on the other end of the line, trying to figure out what to say. What story to tell.
"Olivia, it wasn't?—"
"Don't." The word came out sharper than she intended. "Don't tell me it wasn't what I think. Don't tell me I misunderstood. Our daughter saw you kiss another woman outside our house in the middle of the night. She's been carrying that for five months because she was scared to tell me. She's fifteen years old, and she's been keeping your secret because she was afraid of what would happen if she didn't."
"I was going to tell you. I just—" His voice cracked.
"You looked me in the eye. In the counselor's office. You swore it was only emotional. That nothing physical happened." Her eyes closed. "And I believed you. That's on me. But the lying—that's on you."
"It was only once," Dan said. "It didn't mean anything."
"It meant everything." She waited for her voice to shake. It didn't. "I've spent six months trying to forgive you for something you told me was just texts. Just feelings. Just a mistake that didn't actually cross any lines. And the whole time, you were lying."
"Olivia, please. We can work through this. We can?—"
"No." The word was soft but final. "We can't."
"You can't just decide that on a phone call." She could hear him pacing. "We should talk about this, face to face, when you get back?—"
"I'm done, Dan." She heard herself say it and knew she meant it. "Not done talking. Not done for now. Done. I can't keep trying to save something you already broke."
"The counseling, the effort, doesn't that count for anything?"
"It might have," Olivia said. "If you'd told me the truth."
He didn't answer. Traffic hummed faintly on his end, the familiar silence of the house she'd left behind.
"The kids—" he started.
"The kids will be fine. They're strong, and they have both of us, and they'll be fine." She exhaled. "I'll call you when I get back. We can figure out logistics then."
"Olivia, wait?—"
She hung up.
