The phone call comes through on speaker while I'm folding laundry in the hallway. "Derek, man, you can't do this." Josh's voice carries from the kitchen, exasperated in that way only a best friend can manage. "You can't upend your entire life just because Isabelle Rousseau is in Zurich—your wife already accepted the Stanford position." I freeze, a towel half-folded in my hands. Isabelle Rousseau. The name lands like a stone in still water, sending ripples through everything I thought I knew about the past three weeks. Derek's sudden enthusiasm for the ETH Zurich offer. His insistence that we "reconsider our options" even after I'd already signed the Stanford paperwork. The way he kept saying Switzerland would be "a fresh start" without ever explaining what we needed to be fresh from. I move closer to the kitchen doorway, keeping my footsteps silent on the hardwood. "It's not like that," Derek says, but his voice has that tight quality he gets when he's lying. I've been married to him for ten years—I know every variation of his dishonesty. "The ETH position is objectively better. More funding, better lab facilities—" "Better proximity to your ex-girlfriend, you mean." Ex-girlfriend. The towel slips from my fingers. "Josh, I haven't seen Isabelle in over a decade. This is about my career." "Right. And you just happened to withdraw Natalie's Stanford application without telling her the same week Isabelle's new research center was announced in Zurich." My Stanford application. Withdrawn. I step into the kitchen doorway. Derek's back is to me, his phone face-up on the counter between the coffee maker and the fruit bowl. Josh's name glows on the screen. "I need to go," Derek says quickly. Too quickly. He ends the call and turns, nearly colliding with me. For just a second—less than a heartbeat—I see something like panic cross his face. Then it's gone, replaced by the easy smile that made me fall in love with him in the first place. "Hey, babe. Didn't hear you come in." "Who's Isabelle Rousseau?" The smile doesn't waver. "Just someone I knew in grad school. Why?" The lie sits between us like a third person in the room.