“I’m sorry, Ev.”

“For what?”

What should I say?-I’m sorry I wished your lust into existence? I’m sorry I didn’t have enough willpower to resist it?

“The other night,” I said finally.

“I’m not. Well, I’m sorry you’re uncomfortable, and I’m sorry about Chris, because you know I like him.” I flinched at the sound of my husband’s name from Evan’s mouth. “But I’m not sorry it happened.”

I stood from the breakfast bar and opened the French doors to my mother’s sun porch and her green manicured lawn. It was a decent spring day-slightly overcast and in the mid-sixties-but it might as well have been a blizzard in February. I couldn’t appreciate it.

“It can’t happen again,” I said, relieved at my statement. That was doing something, as Odette had said, instead of avoiding the situation. I charged on, emboldened and motivated now. “I adore you, Ev, you know that, but this absolutely cannot happen. I love my husband. I’m just sorry I started down this road and brought you with me.”

“We’ll see,” Evan said.

“No, we won’t,” I responded quickly. Evan’s powers of persuasion were legendary-from clients to store clerks to the women he dated, he could talk anyone into anything. It would be even harder to successfully have this conversation face-to-face, so I plowed on. “Nothing can happen like that ever, ever again. You have to respect my decision.”

He exhaled loudly. “When are you coming back to the office?”

“Tomorrow, I suppose, but that doesn’t matter. I mean what I say.”

“I’ll see you then.”

After I got off the phone with Evan, I washed my face, combed my hair and brushed my teeth, thinking some basic personal hygiene might make me feel better. Wrong. The phone call was sticking with me, and I felt guiltier and guiltier as each moment passed. Not only at the thought of Evan’s hands on my skin in that bedroom, but at the phone call itself. Talking to him seemed, somehow, like cheating on Chris again.

And so back to the kitchen, back to my mother’s phone, and without thinking about what I would say, I dialed Chris’s work number. He was in a deposition, his secretary said, but he should be out in ten minutes and would call me back. I sat at the breakfast bar, not even trying to entertain myself. Ten minutes passed, then another. I dialed his number again.

“Still in there,” his secretary said, but she sounded disingenuous this time. Or was I imagining it?

I hung up and pushed a few buttons to block my mom’s number from appearing in Chris’s phone. Then I dialed his number. He answered immediately, with a somber, “Chris Rendall.”

“It’s me.”

Silence.

“I just wanted you to know that I’m at my mom’s.”

“Good. Thanks. Tell her hi.”

The phrase “awkward pause” took on a whole new meaning.

“And I also wanted you to know,” I rushed on, “that I love you more than anything, and I’m so sorry about all this, and I’ll do anything I can to make it up to you.”

Why, why, why was it so hard to come up with words unique to our situation, to Chris and me, to explain what I meant? Why did I once again sound like Hope talking to Bo in Salem?

“I need some time,” Chris said.

“Right, sure. How much?”

“I don’t know, Billy.” There was a despondent weight in his voice that said forever might not be enough time away from you.

“What can I do?”

“Nothing. Just give me some time alone.”

“Please, Chris. Tell me something I can do or tell you or…” There was so little it seemed I could do, really. I’d been honest with him, and now he was asking for time. So simple, and yet so complicated. “We’ve got to talk about this, Chris. About our marriage.”

“Yes, we do,” he said, with an eerie finality, “but not now. I’ll call you. Bye.”

In memory of Jan Lovell, who was loved, the plaque said. My mother had placed it on the side of the house, right by the barbecue where Jan died three years ago.

I’d been pacing the lawn, hoping the spring air would simultaneously calm me and then kick me in the ass and usher in a sense of purpose. A sense of anything. I’d thought about Chris, and the night of our engagement, for so long there was a thick layer of fuzz in my head, which insulated me from further rational thought. So I paced, feeling the occasional rays of sun strike my face, the new grass crimp under my bare feet, until I noticed the plaque. I hadn’t paid attention to it recently, since we rarely came out here. This section of the lawn, with its two barbecues (one charcoal, one gas-they gave off different tastes, Jan always said) were Jan’s domain. The grills still stood, like sentries, as if waiting for his return. And above them was the plaque. It made me think of an important gift I’d been given in my life. Not the engagement ring from Chris, but a high school graduation present from Jan.

He and my mom had been married for a year, and I was fond of him, but wary. I knew he could go the way of my father and bolt, so I kept my emotional distance. Holding back seemed smart, and I thought Jan wanted it that way, too.

On the night before the graduation ceremony, my mother threw a bash. She was inside, consulting with caterers and triple-checking that the house was in its usual pristine condition, while Jan and I began the barbecue process. This was an important series of actions for Jan, similar to a pilot’s preflight checks. He made sure there was enough gas, he tried all the burners, he cleaned the grates, he readied the charcoal. I wasn’t sure why he’d asked me to be with him, but I felt a mellow companionship, standing with him on the grass, which was still wet from an earlier rain shower, nursing a can of soda and watching the sun bruise the gray sky as it tried to fight its way through the clouds.

After oiling the hinges on one of the barbecue lids, Jan took a deep breath. “All right, Billy, that’s done,” he said in his deep, rough voice. He usually wore golf shirts and khaki pants-the uniform of the retired suburban male-but that night my mom had dressed his big, lumbering body in a starched white shirt. His gray crew cut had been trimmed as well, and he kept running his hand over his hair and then pulling at the collar, as if waiting for the time he could get out of it. “I wanted to give you something,” he said.

“Okay,” I said. “Do you want me to take the rag inside?” I pointed to the towel he’d used to clean the grill.

“No, no, doll.” Since being married to my mom, he’d adopted a shortened version of my mother’s “baby doll” term of endearment. Jan tilted his head and studied me. I felt a sudden nervousness. I wasn’t used to being looked at. Four years of high school, and I still wasn’t comfortable in my teenaged body. But when I gazed back at Jan, I relaxed. He was nodding, clearly on the verge of saying something. And he looked strangely emotional, his lips pushed together. He ran a hand over his gray hair.

I waited. I could hear my mother’s tinkling voice calling something to the caterers, something like, “Oh, dear, those are horrid!”

“Here’s the thing,” Jan said, reaching for the shelf next to one of his grills and lifting a small, yellowed envelope. “I want to give you a coin. Now, I know that doesn’t sound like much, but this is special.” From inside the envelope, he took out a copper-colored coin. His hands were like large mitts, and the coin seemed petite in comparison. He handed it to me.

“Thank you,” I said, peering at it. On one side was a woman who appeared to be soaring through the air, her arms outstretched.

“She’s called Flying Liberty,” Jan said. “I got that coin and a couple others like it when I was in the service in Italy. I carried them in my pocket and whenever things got bad-and they did-I looked at the Flying Liberty. I always thought that she could go anywhere and do anything. She was freedom, and she gave me strength, you see?”