Chapter 11

I thought about that sentence for a long time.

Then I put on my heaviest coat and drove to the lakefront, because some things can only be considered beside a very large body of water.

Lake Michigan in January is its own country.

The shoreline had frozen into rough white ridges.

Beyond them, pewter water moved slowly beneath a low sky.

I stood until my ears hurt and asked myself Dana’s question.

The one with no comfortable answer.

Do I want the marriage back, or the man I thought I married?

The truth came without drama.

Real truths often do.

I had spent eleven years building a life around a promise.

Part of me still stood on that fire escape holding a coffee mug of champagne, waiting for that man to return.

But he wasn’t coming back.

Because he had never left.

He was the same man who studied all night.

And the same man who lied to me in a boutique hotel.

People aren’t fake.

They’re simply capable of being two things at once.

I could love the first one and still refuse to build my future on the second.

I was still there, half-frozen and strangely calm, when my phone buzzed with a message from an unknown number.

Emily, this is Vanessa Reed. I understand if you never reply. I have something that belongs to you, and I’d like to return it in person. A public place, five minutes, no excuses. Please.

I read it three times.

My first instinct was to delete it.

My second—the one sounding a lot like Margaret—was to find out where I stood.

I replied:

Tomorrow, 2 p.m. The coffee shop on Halsted.

Vanessa was already there when I arrived.

She sat at a corner table with both hands around an untouched paper cup.

She looked smaller than she had on Christmas Eve.

No wine bottle.

No borrowed poise.

She stood halfway when she saw me.

Then sat again, unsure of her own rules.

I sat across from her without removing my coat.

“Thank you for coming,” she said. “I’ll keep this short.”

She slid a plain white envelope across the table.

“Open it, please.”

Inside was a receipt from a jewelry store on Michigan Avenue, dated that morning.

Refund: $1,240.00.

Returned to original form of payment.

Behind it was a handwritten note in careful looping letters:

This belongs to your household. I’m sorry I ever wore it.

I looked up.

“You returned the necklace.”

“I couldn’t keep it. Every time I put it on, I felt like I was wearing a lie.”

She swallowed.

“Last week my son found me crying in the car. He’s eight. He asked what was wrong, and I said grown-ups make mistakes, and the brave thing is to fix what you can. And then I sat there thinking, I can’t teach him that and keep wearing the necklace.”