One month after the man I’d had an affair with died, I received an email from his wife.

Shaking, I locked myself inside my small office before opening it. In the weeks since Anthony had passed away from colon cancer at 31, I’d scoured my laptop, hoping to find an email or a photo that had escaped the wrath of my delete button when I’d resolved to erase all evidence of our relationship. Digging old cell phones out of storage bins, I’d charged them to see if I could recover some of our texts.

When I came up empty-handed, I’d driven to a bookstore, pulling titles he’d gifted me that I’d dumped in the trash. Huddled in a corner, I clutched Still Life With Woodpecker , Love in the Time of Cholera , and The Missing Piece Meets the Big O until an employee in a red vest asked, “Ma’am, are

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