“Is it going to hurt?” It’s a ridiculous question, in retrospect. Of course, it was going to hurt. This might explain why I can’t force myself to look away. As the nurse readies the instruments, my wife lays motionless on the exam table. I stand beside her and watch. When I look down at Melanie, she isn’t watching. Her eyes are closed. I study the rise and fall of her chest. Her rate of breathing has increased. I can’t blame her for being nervous. She doesn’t want this, as much as she knows it has to happen. I think that’s why she refuses to look at me.

“It smells funny in here,” I mention casually. It’s supposed to smell clean and sterile. Like antiseptic. Instead it smells like someone heated up their lunch—an Indian dish—and that’s a real problem for me. I quite like Indian food.

This is sure to ruin it.

I let out a long and heavy sigh. When this is all over, I plan to have a word with management. It should be illegal to heat up your lunch in this kind of place, where things go to die.

“What kind of person could eat at a time like this?” I demand, as the odor grows more intense, wafting through the air like poison, doing future damage to my taste buds.

Melanie doesn’t answer. She doesn’t even open her eyes. The nurse pretends she hasn’t heard, but later when I hear her whispering just outside the door for someone to bring a fan, and I know she has.

I take a seat in the cold, hard chair and fold my arms. Nothing in this room is made for comfort. Melanie doesn’t seem to care. They have given her something for anxiety. “The meds should kick in soon,” I say.

Again, she doesn’t acknowledge I’ve spoken. Maybe they already have.

I lean forward, resting my elbows on my knees. I start to tell her this is for the best, but she knows that deep down, even if she can’t see it yet.

Thankfully, the doctor comes in, saving me from further meaningless chitchat. I study his expression, his serious expression as he reads the words on the screen, notes the nurse has charted.

The baby is a boy, Melanie said. She wanted to name him Ethan. I did not have an opinion. I’ve always thought it bad luck to name a child before they are born.

The doctor pats my wife’s knee. “Shall we proceed?”

She opens her eyes then. They meet mine. I nod slightly. Melanie looks up at the physician and nods her head in agreement.

I check my watch. This is where I’m supposed to say I wish I could take her place. The truth is, I don’t. It wouldn’t matter anyway. There’s no point in wishful thinking. That’s not how this works.

I feel the nurse watching me, watching us. I might pass out. The sight of blood, the metallic smell, it makes me dizzy. I reach over and grab my wife’s hand. She doesn’t pull away. But I can feel that she wants to.

“Don’t worry,” the doctor says. “We’re just starting with an exam.”

I squeeze lightly. I’m not good at these things, so I repeat the words I’ve practiced. “It’ll all be over soon.”

“I’m going to pick up the dry cleaning,” I say to Melanie. “Then I was thinking about stopping for Indian food.” I can’t get that smell out of my mind. I refuse to let their incompetence ruin my favorite dish for me. “Hungry?”

“No,” she tells me.

“You haven’t eaten since breakfast yesterday.” I can’t blame her. I pretty much lost my appetite then, too.

“I’m fine.”

You’re not fine. You’re a liar. I don’t say this, of course. There’s time for that.

Thankfully, Melanie let me off the hook yesterday when she asked me to step out while the doctor performed his exam. The pregnancy resolved itself, she said, and that was it. She doesn’t want to talk about it, and I get it.

Needless to say, I haven’t had the chance to bring up the fact that I’m aware she’s been lying to me. I know about her past. I also haven’t yet worked out what to do about it. When an event like this occurs, I am forced to draw on other areas of expertise. In the mathematical theory of stochastic processes, time is a stochastic process associated with diffusion processes that characterize the amount of time a particle has spent at a given level. How this relates is, Melanie’s lie is not a new one. It was not random. Therefore, I decide it can wait until I’ve had proper sustenance. I pat her head. “I’ll grab you some soup, just in case.”

The morning prior an email from Adam arrived interrupting my breakfast. Adam likes to send emails during non-work hours. This one was different.

The subject line read: Only open if you’re alone.

Never a good sign.

I wasn’t alone. But I opened it anyway.

Staring at me on the screen was a picture of my wife, in a precarious position.

I remember where I know Melanie from, Adam wrote. My kid brother’s bachelor party. She was the entertainment, if you catch my drift. And let’s just say…he still talks about her. You lucky duck, you.

The simplest answer is most often the correct answer. Occam's razor is the process of paring down information to make finding the truth easier. According to the problem-solving principle, when presented with competing hypothetical answers to a problem, one should select the one that makes the fewest assumptions. This is how I come to my hypothesis as it relates to my wife.

Why would Melanie lie about her past?

Her sexual history, of which I did a full accounting of from the very beginning, was supposed to have included two previous partners. Not exactly ideal, as I would have preferred none, but excusable, I guess, for someone of her age and generation.

However, given the latest evidence to the contrary, which is sitting in my inbox, two was incorrect. She lied, and there can only be a handful of reasonable answers as to why that would be. I plan to force the right one.

I am thankful the bookstore has many materials on the subject from which to choose. I select the most obvious. A Survivor’s Guide to Sexual Abuse. At checkout, I ask the clerk to gift wrap it, and she gives me a strange look. “The gift that keeps on giving,” I say and then to clarify, “Closure.”

She studies me for a long moment before walking away. I am then handed off to a boy with bright blue colored hair. He offers no explanation for the delay in appropriate customer service, he only says the woman can no longer assist me. This is my fault. I should not have expected much. His eyebrows are painted on like rainbows. I can only assume his parents paid him little attention growing up, and now he is taking his revenge on the rest of society. “Very new wave,” he mentions, glancing toward the book even though I haven’t asked his opinion. I’ve never understood why people insist on making small talk at the expense of quality conversation. “With the gift wrapping,” he adds. “Gotta make these things mainstream.”

I shrug. I do not understand what he means. He could be speaking Portuguese for all I know. But I keep my mouth shut; I do not want to encourage him. Nor do I have time to be handed off to someone else.

Melanie is still seated on the new couch when I return. It’s not really my taste, but we needed a replacement quick. At least one of us likes it. When her eyes meet mine, I hand the gift to her. The ladies from the church have been by, she tells me. To match her need for small talk, I could tell her about the rude clerk or the guy with blue eyebrows but I am not feeling particularly generous where she is concerned.

“Open it,” I say.

She unwraps it carefully. “What’s this?” she asks as she flips it in her hands.

“I’m sorry you suffered.”

My lying wife throws the book at me. Literally.

I duck and cover.

Her brow furrows. “What is wrong with you?”

“So, you weren’t abused?”

“No,” she huffs. “Where would you get an idea like that?”

“But you lied.”

“About what?”

It concerns me that she has to ask.

“You had more than two sexual partners.”

Her eyes widen. She realizes she’s trapped. “I’m— I’m—what does it matter, anyway?”

“It matters because statistically speaking, the more—” I stop myself. Clearly, she doesn’t care about statistics. If she had, she would have been a little more reserved. “It matters because you lied.”

She scoffs. “I can’t believe you’re doing this now.” I recognize this as classic avoidance. In no time flat, the tears come. Soon, she has pulled out all the stops and she is full out crying. I recognize this too: A form of female manipulation.

I give her time and eventually, when I haven’t caved, she wipes her nose with the back of her hand.

“Well?”

“Seriously? You want to go there now? After what I’ve just been through.”

“What you’ve been through? I’ve just learned my whole marriage is a sham.”

“Really?” She cocks her head. “Is that what you think?”

I dig my heels in. “How many, Melanie?”

She narrows her eyes, and this is war.

“How many what?” All warfare is based on deception.

“How many men were there?”

“I’m not doing this with you, Tom.” she says. We stare at each other for a moment, waiting to see who will be the first to draw. Finally, she stands. I think for a second this is to achieve better aim. But she chooses to retreat. I listen as she climbs the stairs, goes into the guest room and locks the door. Subdue the enemy without fighting.

This is a poor choice on her part.

The next morning when I wake up, Melanie is gone.