“You just disappeared, Phoebe,” he says. “On the first day of the semester. You would never do that.”

“You don’t know what I would or wouldn’t do anymore,” Phoebe says.

“I know you wouldn’t just take off without it being an emergency. We were all worried sick about you. We thought something terrible happened to you. Like Larry.”

Larry was a professor who stopped showing up to classes without emailing. When they found him, he had been vomiting for days.

“You thought I had a stroke?” she says.

“I could only think the worst.”

She was not in the house when he went to check, and there was nothing missing, no signs of any real departure.

“And then I couldn’t find Harry,” he says. “And you don’t know what that felt like, finding him down there in the basement. Digging his little grave.”

The thought of Harry snaps her back into her old self.

“Thank you for doing that,” she says.

Matt starts to cry just thinking about Harry. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Why would I tell you? You left.”

“I loved Harry,” he says. “You know that.”

“You loved Harry?”

“I loved you, too. I still do. I always will. I know that now.”

He takes her hands.

“When I saw you on Monday, I was so stunned. I wanted to talk to you, but I didn’t know how. And then I thought you were dead, and I just … couldn’t handle it. Why did you just leave like that?”

She doesn’t answer. She doesn’t have to say anything. He is technically not her husband anymore. She doesn’t owe him the deep truth about her life.

“How did you find me?” she asks.

He says it was easy. Too easy. “You never took me off our bank account.”

He saw the charge for the airplane and the Newport hotel, and he remembered the name, the Cornwall. He couldn’t remember why it sounded so familiar to him, maybe they went there once, maybe they were supposed to go there.

“But why? Why leave like that, so cryptically, to come to … a wedding? And whose wedding is this?”

“Lila’s,” Phoebe says. “And Gary’s.”

“Gary? The man who was just here?”

“Yes.”

“Oh,” he says. “But it seemed like … I thought … never mind.”

“And so you just fly here? After two years of living fifteen minutes away from you, never visiting me once, you fly all the way here to find me?”

“I missed you. More than you know. I’ve thought about you every day since we got divorced. I wanted to call or text. I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t. I didn’t know what to say. I was so awful to you. And then you were just gone. You weren’t answering my texts or calls. And Bob said your email was really cryptic. I’m sorry, I just had to come. I had to make sure you were okay.”

“I wasn’t okay,” she says. “I was … very upset. I’ve been upset since you left.”

“I know. I’m so sorry I did that to you.”

But now it annoys her that he thinks this was all about him. And while he was certainly a large part of it, he was not all of it. This was bigger than him. She knows this now.

“It’s not just about you leaving,” she says. “It’s everything. It’s about the way I’ve been my entire life. I’ve been so … contained.”

“What do you mean, contained?”

“I mean, I just lived my life in such a small way,” she says. “It was too small. I was so convinced there was only one way to live my life.”

“I liked our life,” he says.

“Apparently not.”

“I was going through something, Phoebe. But I know that’s no excuse. I know I could have handled it differently.”

“Ha!” she says. “That’s one way to put it. You were awful.”

“I know.”

“You abandoned me. Christ, you don’t have to be with a person forever. But you don’t have to abandon them. You were such a coward. I’m so glad I can see that now.”

“I was a coward,” he says. “I can see that now, too.”

“I hated you,” she says. “I still sometimes hate you.”

Yet she feels glad that he tracked her down. Glad that he worried about her, glad to find out that his love did not disappear. And then she feels shame that she feels glad that a man has stalked her. Then she remembers she is not supposed to be feel shame, according to her therapist and Thyme. She is supposed to be kinder to herself, because this habit of tearing herself down every three seconds in her mind makes her feel ashamed. But at least she notices it. At least she is becoming aware of these things now.

“It would kill me if you hated me,” he says.

“I don’t actually hate you,” she says. “Not anymore. I’m feeling better now. I really am.”

“Because of that guy?”

“Don’t even begin to get jealous.”

He knows. He is ashamed about that, too. He is sorry he is jealous, sorry that he left. Sorry that he cheated on her. It was absolutely the wrong thing to do. But he felt like he was drowning and it’s no excuse, yet he didn’t know what else to do.

“Be honest?”

“I couldn’t,” he says. “After Mia and I slept together, I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe I had done it. I couldn’t imagine a more horrible thing to have done after I did it.”