The roses arrived at my desk at 10:14 on a Tuesday morning, right in the middle of closing out the monthly payroll for the lumber yard. Two dozen deep red stems wrapped in stiff green paper, smelling like a florist shop and twenty years of habit. I actually teared up right there between my dual monitors, thinking about how Roy remembered the exact day we stood in front of the justice of the peace back in 2004.

Then my phone buzzed against the laminate desktop. Two text alerts from the credit union, back to back.

Everly’s Flowers, $84.50. Everly’s Flowers, $84.50. Six minutes apart.

I stared at the screen until the numbers blurred together. We share that account for everything, groceries, gas, the water bill, so every ping goes straight to my phone. I reached for my coffee mug, and my hand shook enough that the black ceramic clattered against the saucer.

I called the shop before I called him. A young girl picked up on the third ring, sounding bored.

I asked her if she had a double charge on her register. She asked for the name and the card number, tapped away at a keyboard, and then her voice went all bright and helpful.

“Oh, wait, no, ma’am,” she said. “We had two different orders on that card this morning. One went to the accounting firm on Oak Street, and the second one went out to the Carriage Lofts on Weidman, apartment 4C.”

My purse was clear across the room on the filing cabinet, but my black Sharpie was sitting right there in the cup with the paperclips. I didn’t even think about it. I just pulled my left hand over and dragged the felt tip across my skin, pressing down until the letters stung.

Carriage Lofts. 4C.

When I dialed Roy’s number, I kept my voice flat, the same tone I use when a client shorts their ledger by fifty cents. I asked him if he’d sent me flowers.

“Of course I did, honey,” he said, and I could hear the papers rustling on his desk at the auto parts distributor where he manages inventory. “Happy anniversary. Did they get there? Do you love them?”

“They’re lovely, Roy,” I said, watching the black ink on my skin soak into the lines of my thumb. “Did you send flowers anywhere else?”

That pause. You married people know the pause I mean. It is not a hesitation because someone forgot.

It is the sound of a brain slamming doors behind the eyes to see which lie is standing closest to the front.

“Must be a billing glitch,” he said, too smooth, too fast. “Everly’s probably ran it twice by accident. I’ll call them right now and get it fixed.”

He offered to fix it before I even told him there was a problem. That was what gave him away. A man with nothing to hide doesn’t offer to clean up a mess he doesn’t know about yet.

“Okay, honey,” I told him. “Thanks for the flowers.”

I hung up, grabbed my keys, and walked out of the office without telling my supervisor I was leaving. I didn’t go home. I didn’t even go to the highway. I drove straight across town to Weidman Avenue with the heater blasting because my teeth wouldn’t stop chattering.

The Carriage Lofts is an old brick warehouse they turned into apartments back when the downtown revitalization money came through. It has those big arched windows and a little glass foyer with an intercom system that looks expensive. I parked my sedan right across the street behind a delivery van and turned the engine off.

I didn’t have to wait long.

On the fourth floor, right in the front window where the lace curtain was pulled back, a woman in a pale yellow robe stepped into the light. She had a glass vase in one hand and she was pulling the little card out of the baby’s breath with the other. I could see the red heads bunched together just like mine.

I sat there in my sensible sedan with twenty years of marriage sitting on the passenger seat in a cardboard box, and my chest felt hollowed out like a rotted stump.

I got out of the car. I didn’t run, but I didn’t hesitate either. My boots hit the pavement with a sharp, heavy sound that seemed too loud for the middle of a Tuesday.

The glass door to the foyer was unlocked because a guy carrying a bundle of dry cleaning was just coming out. I slipped inside before the latch could catch. The hallway smelled like cheap lemon wax and stale carpet. I walked down to the elevator, but I didn’t wait for it. I took the stairs, four flights of concrete steps that made my knees throb.

By the time I reached the fourth floor, I was breathing hard, but my hands were entirely steady.

I found 4C right at the end of the hall. The nameplate by the bell was empty, just a little brass slot with no paper inside.

I raised my hand and I knocked three times, hard against the wood, right over the spot where I had written the address in permanent marker.

The lock clicked almost immediately. The door swung open about six inches, held by a brass chain on the inside, and a woman with messy blonde hair and sleep in her eyes peered out at me through the gap. She was wearing that same yellow robe, and over her shoulder, sitting right on the kitchen counter behind her, was the crystal vase with two dozen red roses and the little card I already knew by heart.

She stared at me, blinking against the hallway light. “Can I help you?”

I didn’t say a word to her. I just reached up, grabbed the heavy brass chain where it hung in the crack of the door, and pulled until the screws tore right out of the pine frame with a sharp crack.

Roy was sitting at the little laminate kitchen table inside in his undershirt, holding a cup of coffee, looking right at me when the door hit the wall.

He didn’t yell. He didn’t jump up. He just set the mug down very carefully on a napkin and looked at the Sharpie stains still dark across the back of my hand.

“You should have called,” he said.

“Twenty years, Roy,” I told him, and my voice didn’t shake once. “And you couldn’t even spring for a separate florist.”