“And Miguel?”
There was a beat of silence.
“Your husband was interviewed at the time. He told investigators they were separated.”
You closed your eyes.
Separated.
Not missing. Not dead. Not still his wife. Separated. A word clean enough to keep suspicion polite. Flexible enough to use later on a woman like you.
“He lied,” you whispered.
“We’re looking into that.”
You spent the next hour on the bathroom floor, not crying exactly, but shuddering in waves as your body tried to process the scale of your own life. Marriage is intimate in humiliating ways. It is toothbrushes beside each other. Shared grocery apps. Favorite takeout orders. One person seeing the inside of your exhaustion and calling it ordinary. To realize the man beside you had not merely betrayed you, but built your entire marriage on top of another
