Chapter 15

Two years earlier, she had offered me a version of the same job.

I declined within a day.

At the time, I said the timing wasn’t right.

The truth was that Daniel had said gently over dinner:

“I’d miss you too much if you were gone so often.”

I mistook his reluctance for love.

I folded my ambition into a drawer and told myself it was a sacrifice I was happy to make.

I looked at the folder.

I thought about the woman standing in a crowded mall with a shopping bag slipping from her hand.

And the woman standing on the frozen lakefront deciding what she deserved.

“Yes,” I said.

Priya blinked.

“You don’t want to think about it?”

“I’ve been thinking about it for two years,” I said. “I just needed to stop asking permission.”

That same month, I bought a small brick townhouse in Evanston.

Its kitchen window faced east, so morning sunlight reached the countertop like a gift.

Dana arrived with three boxes of pizza and a truly alarming amount of bubble wrap.

Margaret and Robert came on moving day with a toolbox and a casserole.

Robert spent the afternoon assembling a bookshelf while happily muttering at the instructions, as if building it correctly were both penance and joy.

Margaret hung the curtains.

Stepped back.

Tilted her head.

“Better.”

In April, my first trip as Regional Director took me to Boston.

I’ll admit I dreaded it.

Boston was where Daniel’s lie had lived.

The city where I had been the night he told me he was “going to bed early.”

I stood outside my hotel, a nice one with a brass revolving door, and felt the old ache flutter in my stomach.

Then I walked inside.

Checked in.

And did something silly, small, and deeply necessary.

I ordered a pot of tea in the lobby.

Sat in an armchair by the window.

Took my time drinking it.

I watched people come and go.

A couple laughing over a map.

A man in a rumpled suit.

A mother with a stroller.

The city rearranged itself around me.

No longer the scene of a lie.

Simply a place.

I called Margaret from the lobby.

“I’m in Boston,” I said. “I took it back.”

A pause.

Then I heard her slowly breathe out.

“Good girl,” she said, her voice thick. “Good for you, Emily.”

That evening at a conference dinner, a twenty-six-year-old program coordinator named Tess lingered after everyone else left.

She twisted her napkin and quietly asked if she could get my advice about something “hypothetical.”

Her hypothetical involved a boyfriend.

A phone he kept face-down.

A suspicious weekend trip.