I thought walking out after the affair would be the hardest thing I’d ever do—until I opened our bedroom door and found my husband on the carpet with a pair of shears, cutting my dresses into ribbons.

Silk slithered over his hands like streamers after a parade. He didn’t even flinch when I gasped. He just lifted his chin and said, almost bored, “If you’re leaving, you don’t get to look pretty for someone else.”

Where I come from, people pretend not to see what everyone knows. The town is small enough to know your dog’s birthday and polite enough to ignore your father’s empty pew. We measure seasons in yard sales and potlucks, and I was raised to hunt for treasure in other people’s castoffs. Clothes were never “just clothes” to me. They were mile markers: the red wrap dress from the summer fair when Chris kissed me for the first time; the mint-green vintage my mother swore made me look “so Audrey”; the ridiculous sequined shift I bought on a freezing night, seven months postpartum, when I needed to recognize myself in the mirror.