She sat on her favorite chair, watching the clock ticking. All alone in the big house, she was feeling a little bit unsettled. She had long since abandoned her slinky black dress and heels for something more comfortable... flannel pajama bottoms and her old and very worn "Florida Keys" tee shirt. She shifted positions in the chair, sliding her left ankle under her right thigh, and rolling back her sore shoulders. The clock struck eleven. She tried to hold back her tears, telling herself that he was having car trouble, or his boss had kept him late, or he had to take his elderly mother to the hospital. But she knew deep in her heart that none of these was the case. She had been having suspicions since that first horrible night almost six months ago, when he had come home in the middle of the night long after she had gone to bed, blaming it on a late night at the office combined with car trouble. But she had smelled the woman's perfume when he had held her close after he crawled into bed. Then she was noticing little things... the times she had answered the phone late at night and the caller had hung up. The time she had gone to his car looking for a map and found a tube of lipstick. He had calmly told her that the neighbor had left it in his car when he had to give her a ride to town because her car had broken down. She had accepted his excuses because she didn't want to believe that the man who had sworn to have and to hold her, for better and for worse, could do something so insensitive and so hurtful to her. So she had gone on trying to live her happy life, putting the kids on the bus in the morning, going to work, making dinner, and being a good little wife and mother, telling herself all the while that she was just being paranoid, and making herself believe when he held her close and whispered that he loved her. The clock struck eleven thirty. She heard a car pulling into the driveway. Peeking out the window, she saw her husband stepping out of it onto the pavement. He got his briefcase out of the back seat and came towards the house. He opened the front door quietly as if he was trying to come in unnoticed. "Welcome home," she said, standing up. For an instant a look of guilt came over him and he looked like a little boy caught with stolen candy. But he quickly washed that away with a tired and pained expression. "The car wouldn't start," he said. Her eyes welled over with tears and she walked out the door. At that instant, he knew that she knew and he didn't even try to go after her and explain.