“Of course you could have. I’m sure. But wait. What do you mean, I didn’t care about us? And when have I ever been more concerned with my job?” Despite the guilt, the fear, the sheer horribleness of the situation, I saw a glimmer of hope. This was why I had told him-so that we could finally face what had been wrong with us. We couldn’t move on, we couldn’t be truly happy, if we couldn’t do that.

“Forget it,” Chris said, his head sagging in his hands. “Forget it.” His last words were muffled, and somehow that muted volume had let the dust in the room settle. I saw then that there was no quick fix. I had done something that had taken maybe forty seconds, but would take so much longer to repair the damage. That is, if the damage, combined with what had already been lying in wait, could be repaired at all.

Chris raised his head. “Billy, I’m not trying to punish you or anything, but could you please leave?”

“I’m not leaving! I’m not leaving you.” What was happening? I was supposed to start over, start clean. “We have to talk about things,” I said, plaintively. “I want to explain about Evan. It was-”

“Don’t!” Chris said. His voice was harsh and ragged. “Don’t make me listen to it! I won’t.”

“Seriously, it was just kissing. It wasn’t anything-”

“Jesus, Billy, don’t you get it? It’s not just what you did, it’s the fact that you did it at all. I never, ever thought you’d do something like this.” He gave me a look that made me see him as if he were eight years old and someone had picked him last for softball. “How can I trust you not to do it again or not to do something worse? How can I trust you at all?”

“Oh, honey, I would never do anything like this again. It just happened so fast. We were just at this party, and we started kissing, and-”

“For Christ’s sake, stop it!” His words thundered throughout the condo, echoing off the gleaming granite of the countertops, the sparkling marble in the bathroom, the polished wood floors. “I believe you, Billy, but don’t make me hear about it!”

“Okay, okay.”

“Will you leave me alone? Please,” he said, his voice lower. “I need some time.”

“I’ll sleep on the couch tonight.” Another cliché, and somehow I knew he wouldn’t agree.

His eyes were more tired and raw than I’d ever seen them. His lids were heavy, as if they might snap shut at any moment. But his jaw was a sharp line. “I don’t want to hurt you, but I can’t even look at you right now.” He stared past me, over my shoulder. “I’ll just go somewhere.”

I started to cry then at the sight of Chris, my husband, with his jaw set straight, his eyes filling with tears. When those eyes flicked to mine, they told me that he hated me a little.

“No, I’ll go,” I said. I couldn’t make Chris do the leaving.

I went into the bedroom. Immediately, my eyes landed on the frog. It was perched atop two paperbacks, and it looked more smug than ever. I felt a churn of anger in my stomach and though, You nasty little shit. It’s all your fault.

But I knew that wasn’t true. I’d gotten what I wanted, and then I’d made my choices. This was, decidedly, my responsibility.

I dragged my eyes away from the frog and stood helplessly. I couldn’t figure out what to pack, what bag I should pack in. I had to work the rest of the week, so that meant work clothes, but what did any of that matter? And where was I supposed to go? Tess lived in Wilmette with her kids. She didn’t even have a guest room. For a second, I thought of Evan in his big lakefront condo, but then I hated myself all the more for even momentarily considering it. Alexa flickered in my mind, but we weren’t that kind of friends, and there certainly was no room in her apartment. A hotel? It seemed too spare, too lonely, too…awful.

Finally, I thought of the person who used to come to my mind first. I picked up the phone. “Mom,” I said, my voice breaking a little. “Can I come over?”

chapter thirteen

I knocked on my mother’s huge mahogany door. She opened it almost immediately. She was barefoot, wearing a navy blue track suit and a white, cloth headband around her dyed-black hair.

“Baby doll,” she said, hugging me. I drooped against her. I let go. What is it about my mother’s arms that can always make me sob?

She led me into “my” bedroom, one of the six in this huge house she and Jan had built during their marriage. Jan’s two children had been married and long out of the house when they met, but because my sisters and I were still college age, or just graduated, Jan, in his sweet way, insisted that we each have our own room. The fact was that Dustin and Hadley had rarely stayed in theirs.

Mine was wallpapered with salmon and white toile and decorated with white furniture. It was a space that calmed me whenever I entered it, but it was a room to visit, not a room to live in. It usually signaled a short vacation. Except that now I was on an indefinite vacation from my marriage.

“You didn’t say anything on the phone. What’s wrong?” my mom said, sitting on the bed next to me.

“Chris,” I said simply. “He asked me to leave.”

“Oh, Billy.” She covered her mouth. Her delicate fingernails were painted the color of pink tulips. “Why?”

I shrugged.

“What happened?” she asked.

“I messed it up. I’ve messed up a lot of things.”

“Come here, honey,” she said, making a shushing sound. She pulled me back into an embrace, causing me to cry again. This was why I’d come. To receive comfort, surely, and, not unimportantly, a roof over my cheating head, but I’d come to get my mother back, the one I’d had before she was a jet-setting, bridge-playing, independent social maven.

In the morning, I realized that the maven was still very much alive.

“Sweetie,” my mother said, cracking my door. “I’m off. Will you be all right?”

I glanced at the nightstand clock-7:30. Shit, I’d be late for work. Way late by the time I showered and dressed and joined the throngs of traffic on the inbound expressway. But then I realized I didn’t care.

I looked back at my mom. She was dressed in pink and tan plaid slacks, a white golf shirt and a jaunty pink cap.

“Where are you off to?” I asked.

“Golf. I play twice a week with Richard and Betsy.”

“Richard and Betsy?”

“I’m sure you know them.”

I was sure I didn’t. “When will you be home?” I asked, trying not to sound needy. I’d wanted her to have her own life, after all. I still wanted that.

“Hmm. Two-ish, probably, because we’ll have lunch at the club. Come meet us!”

“No, thanks.”

“Off to work then?”

“No,” I said, deciding in that moment I could not bear the thought of the office.

“What will you do?”

Take an overdose of ibuprofen? Find one of Jan’s hunting rifles? “I’m not sure, but I’ll figure it out.”

“Well, the house is yours,” she said, grandly sweeping an arm, as if a Willy Wonka treasure trove of delights awaited me. “You’re welcome to be here as long as you need.”

“Thanks.”

She blew me an air kiss and turned away, leaving me to wonder why I didn’t feel so welcome at all.

I lay in bed for an hour, unable to drag my mind’s eye away from a memory-a scene I could see with perfect, laserlike clarity. Chris and me. Not the fight from the other night, not his pained face, although that image threatened to intrude every so often. No, the memory that played itself on a loop was the night he asked me to marry him.

It had surprised both of us, the intensity of our affection, the swift movement from strangers to people who shared their lives together. And our passion was a force to be reckoned with, too. Something that could, and did, strike without warning, forcing us together into theater bathrooms and coat closets during parties.