"You smell of Dior Poison, which is different from the bottle on my dressing table." Emma pinched the white shirt with coral lipstick stains and threw it hard on the kitchen counter. The hum of the dishwasher stopped abruptly, and David's hand holding the red wine glass froze in mid-air, and the amber liquid shook dangerously on the wall of the glass.

This is the seventh confrontation at two o'clock in the morning this month. Since David attended the anniversary party of the Wall Street Elite Club, his Armani tie is always wrapped with the unfamiliar scent of gardenia, and the cuffs are occasionally stained with gold sequins. Emma looked at herself in the mirror without makeup, the loose flannel robe wrapped with the fat that had not disappeared after giving birth, and suddenly remembered the girl in the wedding photo wearing a backless wedding dress and a lily of the valley on her collarbone.

"Rebecca is just a work partner." David pulled off his tie, and his Adam's apple rolled uneasily. The wedding ring on his ring finger knocked against the marble countertop, making a crisp sound. Emma stared at the half-cut pink scarf sticking out of her husband's suit pocket and suddenly smiled. She remembered that when she sorted out her closet last week, she found her treasured silk pajamas stuffed at the bottom, and David's new tie clip was engraved with the unfamiliar initials "R.L".

The next morning, after sending her daughter to a private kindergarten, Emma walked straight into Barneys on Fifth Avenue. When she walked out of the fitting room wearing 10-centimeter Jimmy Choo, the woman reflected in the mirrored corridor made her breath stagnate. The deep V-neck red satin skirt outlined her graceful curves, and her exposed back shone with pearly luster under the crystal chandelier. She trembled and maxed out the supplementary credit card, and suddenly realized that she had to calculate coupons even when buying a pack of baby wipes in the past eight years.

When the neon lights first came on, Emma sat in the corner of the Speakeasy bar in Greenwich Village. The smoky smell of whiskey mixed with cedar perfume, when the bartender came to refill the glass for the third time, the man in a suit at the next table finally plucked up the courage to strike up a conversation. When she gently shook the glass with the newly learned French gesture, watching the ice cubes hitting the wall of the glass and reflecting the bright light, she suddenly remembered the words in the wedding vows: "no matter good times or bad." At this moment, the flying tail of the woman's eyes in the mirror is closer to her 20-year-old self than ever before.