He left the console running to grab dinner. I only meant to nudge the controller aside. Then I put the headset on, and a stranger started talking about last night.

I mailed off a plastic tube for a school science project. Six weeks later the results page held a stranger who shared half my blood and lived ten minutes away.

My mother turned down a boy who became famous to marry a steady, humble trucker. For thirty years that story was our family gospel. Then I went looking at his old logbooks.

I went looking for proof of one affair. What I found instead was a ledger, two phones, and a version of my wife I had never met.

When the phone rang before dawn with her screaming about men in a black car, I believed every word. Believing her was the easy part.

My husband forbade me from his mother's funeral, saying it was too much family drama. So I looked her up online. The obituary named a wife. It wasn't me.