This is the writer's voice, new fiction from the New Yorker. I'm Deborah

Treisman, fiction editor at The New Yorker.

On this episode of the writer's voice,

we'll hear Zach Williams read his story, Neighbors,

from the March 25, 2024 issue of the magazine. Williams is a Jones lecturer in fiction at Stanford University.

His debut story collection, Beautiful Days,

will be published in June.

Now here's Zach Williams.

Neighbors. Neighbors.

Not long after our twins turned three, my wife, Anna, accepted a transfer to the west coast.

The opportunity was lucrative, but that wasn't why we were eager to go.

Anna had spent that March in April involved with another man, a colleague, someone whose name

I'd never heard until she told me about him.

She said that it had been a terrible mistake, that it had only made

her hate herself, and that this person had now begun almost to frighten her, continuing to call

after she'd asked him to stop, declaring that he'd leave his family, demanding to speak with me.

I was surprised to find that more than anything, I felt sorry for her.

The episode was the culmination of a long withdrawal that each of us had made from the other.

For some time our mutual unhappiness had felt like too delicate or intimate a subject to broach.

I knew I wasn't blameless.

The hard to fathom part really was that she'd hidden it from me.

It felt so old-fashioned predicated on such a rigid understanding of who we could be together.

...