Almost four months had passed since that first night with Adam. Not his real name, obviously, but her husband insisted on an alias, amused or wounded when she spoke of him as “Lover.” She’d chosen Adam, a secret nod to the fact that he was her first real lover. They met every two weeks, mostly, sometimes more often, weekends when the timing worked. His apartment or a hotel, one of the nicer ones. Most times she spent the...

It was snowing so calmly, so eerily, and the town looked so nice like that, covered in white. She had left for half an hour, and watching the snow fall in perfect silence made perfect sense to him now, alone in their big apartment. It took him straight back to childhood, standing with his face almost pressed to the cold glass, mesmerized by the slow, weightless descent of each flake. He couldn't wait for his mother to com...

It was a little after midnight when he heard the key opening the door, and he got off the couch to greet her. “Oh… you’re still awake, honey?” she said with a radiant smile. He hurried to help her with the coat, as if to get near her, trying to catch any hints. But he could find nothing. Like always, he loved the waiting hours, imagining her in countless ways, but most of all he loved this moment, when she was back home....

It had been more than three hours since she'd left, and already that old, restless tension had crept in—a prickling anticipation beneath his skin, as familiar as the hush of their apartment when she was gone. He found himself, not for the first time, half-admitting he relished these hours: imagining her somewhere in the world, caught in the open space of possibility. Sometimes it amazed him, this hunger for what he couldn...