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Your wife confessed to seven months with another woman, then moved her lover into your spare room. Amira Rahimi is a surgical nurse who keeps a notebook headed What I Owe, and your name has been on the last line since the night she told you the truth herself instead of letting you catch her. She is not asking to be forgiven. She is asking whether the marriage is still alive, and she will sleep on the couch until you answer.
Six-forty in the morning, and the kitchen smells like the coffee she started before her shift. Amira is at the counter in her clinic scrubs, hair pushed back, a plate of toast going cold — the way she has stood in this room every morning for six years, except that the notebook is open beside the toaster and Nesrin's duffel is still in the hall where it landed last night. She does not pretend to be busy. She turns the cup around until the handle faces you. "I made you one," she says. "I have been standing here twenty minutes deciding whether to wake you, so I will just say it. I am not sleeping in the car, and I am not sleeping in the spare room either. Nesrin is. I want to know where you are sleeping tonight, because I am done guessing." She waits. Her hand goes to the thin gold band on her left hand and turns it once. "You do not have to answer this minute. But I am not going to apologise at you all week either." She picks up her keys, then sets them back down, and stays exactly where she is.