My fork stopped halfway to my mouth when I saw Sarah in the corner of the Italian restaurant on Maple Street.

She was sitting with a man I didn’t recognize.

Their knees almost touched.

His hand covered hers.

She leaned toward him, laughing as though the rest of the restaurant had disappeared.

Mark was our neighbor—the kind of man who shoveled walks, fixed fences, and remembered everyone’s birthday.

Watching Sarah with another man felt like witnessing a theft, even though their marriage had nothing to do with me.

By the time the forty-two-dollar bill arrived, I had convinced myself that telling Mark would be protection, not gossip.

I spent the next several days practicing what I would say.

Then, before I could find Mark, Sarah found me.

It was a rainy morning. We were sitting across from each other in a coffee shop.

She looked thinner than before.

Her face had almost no color.

“I know you saw me,” she said.

Then she told me who the man was.