Chapter 2

"You promised me," I said.

He blinked at me like I'd spoken another language.

"What are you even doing here? This isn't a place for you."

"Do you see how many people are staring? You're making a scene."

His disgust was a knife slipping under my ribs.

My eyes started to sting. I fought to keep the tears in. At my age, crying in public was a kind of surrender.

"You promised you'd buy me a diamond. Today is —"

"Enough." Richard cut me off, impatient. "How long are you going to drag up something from forty years ago? I'll get you one for our anniversary, okay? Go home. Look at yourself. You look unhinged. Leave me and your son some dignity."

He finished with a sigh, as if I were the one at fault.

Ethan stepped up beside him, just as irritated. "Seriously, Mom, go home. The house is a mess, there's laundry to fold, and you're out here harassing us? You think you'd even understand the program?"

His tone took on a whine.

"You're trying to measure up to Vivienne? Look at yourself. What is there to compare?"

Vivienne tugged gently at Richard's sleeve. "Richard, the second half is starting. Let's just go in."

She gave me a small, apologetic look — graceful, practiced — and turned away.

She knew Richard would handle whatever I did.

The moment she was gone, Richard shoved me.

The cancer report scattered at my feet.

They walked over it. All three of them. Not one of them glanced down.

Not one of them saw the words early-stage gastric cancer.

Not one of them saw my name printed at the top.

Richard didn't ask if I wanted to come in. Just like the last forty years, he simply closed the door on me.

When the crowd had thinned, I bent down and gathered the pages off the sidewalk.

If no one here saw me, then I'd use whatever time I had left to reach for the freedom that had always belonged to me.

It was time to go.

Back at the brownstone, I drafted the divorce terms line by line at the desk in my study.

I knew Richard had stashed away plenty over the years — accounts I'd never be shown, investments I'd never be told about.

I'd stopped caring.

Whatever I got from the divorce, plus the proceeds from selling the brownstone, would carry me comfortably into the rest of my life.

When I was done, I looked around at the house.

Forty years. I'd grown into the walls of this place.

Before Vivienne, I never knew Richard could be romantic or attentive.

In forty years of marriage, he had never once brought me flowers.

Every time I asked for something small — a note, a weekend trip, anything tender — he'd been too busy, too tired, too impatient.

But for the big things, the public things, he spent freely.

When I was pregnant with our son, he'd been gentle. He'd hired a postpartum doula himself, brought me soup in the middle of the night, slept in the armchair so I could rest.

I'd told myself he just wasn't a romantic man. That he showed love differently.

Then Vivienne came back.

She had been my oldest friend, from the days we were both in college. She'd told me once she'd never marry. She'd kept saying it, year after year, with that easy bright laugh.

I thought I was happy.

Then Vivienne walked into my marriage.

I don't know when it started, the way the two of them began to orbit each other. Every time I brought it up, even sideways, Richard would blow up.

He'd say he was just being considerate. That she was my best friend, that of course he paid her a little extra attention.

Vivienne would react with the same outraged hurt.

I'd convinced myself I was being paranoid.

Now I understood.

Maybe Richard and Vivienne had never touched each other. Maybe it had never been physical.

But Richard had given me the laundry and the school runs and the silent dinners, and kept every romantic version of himself for her.

He sent flowers to her. He tracked her favorite Carnegie Hall subscription series and made sure he got seats in her tier. He knew which small-batch Ethiopian coffee she drank because he drank it with her.

I had been Richard's fallback.

And it had taken me forty years to understand.

I'd been eating a half-cooked meal for forty years. I'd eaten it until it gave me cancer.

Early stage, the doctor had said. Caught in time.

So maybe it wasn't too late to wake up.