I shut myself into the apartment and wait for the full-body regret to simmer down.
It’s for the best. I’m stuck here for at least fifty-three more days, and I’m not going to blow up my life again in that window.
I drop my bag and shuffle deeper into the apartment. Julia’s shoes are in the front hall, her clothes everywhere in the living room and bedding still wadded on the sofa. The bathroom counter is smeared with makeup, and she’s left two separate hair tools plugged in.
Minus the fire hazard, I don’t mind. As a kid, I was so jealous of my friends who had siblings. My best memories were all of movie nights with Mom or our long Saturday morning wanders through kitsch shops and record stores, but so much of my childhood was sitting in an otherwise empty apartment, longing for the kind of noise, clutter, permanence that comes from having a family, rather than just one overworked mother.
Julia might be a slob, but having her stuff everywhere makes the empty apartment feel a little less lonely.
I unplug her flat iron and clean up a bit, then take a shower and make some Easy Mac. While I eat, I email potential sponsors along with a few higher-profile authors we hosted back at the Richmond library to ask whether they could record videos to air as we meet our fundraising goals throughout the night. Then I check my phone calendar against the wall calendar. To my surprise, Miles has added his winery shifts in blue, and Julia (I presume) has added in scratchy red, across this Thursday: COMMIT MURDER.
Underneath it, I scribble as small as I can: Call FBI about Julia.
Then I get in bed and try to read, without any success. Then I try to watch an action movie and quickly realize it’s not fun to watch that sort of thing alone, so I take to scrolling social media, seeing college friends’ summer pregnancy announcements, a Richmond coworker’s recent trip to Thailand to see family, and then, without any warning, there she is, on my screen.
Petra.
And sure, that’s jarring enough. But it’s not what makes me fling my phone across the room, pulse racing.
It’s who posted the picture. It’s who else is in it.
The tiny woman with her, arms wrapped around Petra, both of them beaming in front of decimated plates of chocolate waffles on an orange-checked tablecloth.
I only saw the image for a second, but it’s seared into my mind.
How could it not be, when I recognize the tablecloth, the waffles, and even Petra’s beaming friend?
I crawl across the bed, heart in my throat, and brace myself before flipping the phone face up again.
Cooper posted the picture. I don’t need the geotag—RICHMOND, VIRGINIA—to know where the shot was taken. It’s our brunch spot. The one he, Sadie, Peter, and I used to go to most Saturdays.
Peter and Petra are visiting them.
I can’t breathe. My clothes feel too tight, my skin hot and itchy. I stumble to the window and my arms have gone too weak to open it on the first try. When I finally do, there’s no breeze to break the heat, anyway.
It’s one thing to be replaced by an ex. It’s another to feel like your whole life has been handed over to someone else.
I think I might be sick. I even go into the bathroom, just in case.
This is your fault, a voice whispers from the back of my mind. You’re the one who built everything around him.
Moved to his hometown. Let Sadie’s and my relationship get absorbed by the four of us, our weekly girls’ nights becoming double dates, our weekend trips replaced with couples’ vacations, our conversations unfolding in our group chat instead of on long phone calls. I’m the one who put all my eggs in the incredibly awkward basket of willfully befriending Scott and the rest of Peter’s Waning Bay buddies instead of making my own—never mind how hard it is to make headway into a group who’s mostly interested in rehashing shared memories. Moved into a house that belonged only to Peter.
Miles was right. I need to stop fixating on how much I’ve lost, and focus on building something new. I already knew my old life was over. Sitting here and simmering in it won’t do me any good.
I close the toilet and sit atop the lid, pulling up my messages with Ashleigh. You said you had a hobby I could borrow? I type.
Every fourth Wednesday of the month. AKA tomorrow, she writes. You in?
What is it? I ask. All you said is it isn’t “organized exercise.”
Still true, she replies. Don’t show up in raggedy sweats.
Is it DISorganized exercise? I ask.
That’s certainly closer, she says.
Great, I say, and then I text Miles too. Maybe it’s a mistake, maybe it’s not smart, but being “smart” hasn’t paid off well for me thus far.
I’m in for Saturday, I tell him.
This is not how I pictured Ashleigh’s monthly poker night.
For one thing, the man who answers the door to the bilevel five miles outside town isn’t a stranger.
He’s a seventy-something-year-old dead ringer for Morgan Freeman, as long as you ignore the full Red Wings–branded sweatsuit and matching slippers, which don’t strike me as a particularly Freemanesque sartorial choice.
“About time you showed up!” he greets us and steps aside to let us into his home.
“Harvey!” I say, too stunned to move.
“Sorry we’re late.” Ashleigh tips her head toward me. “Daphne’s fault, obviously.”
Harvey snorts. “I know I’ve got a youthful glow, but I wasn’t born yesterday. Come in, come in. Shoes off. Everyone’s back in the breakfast nook.”
I slip my loafers off next to Ashleigh’s knee-high boots and we follow Harvey down a narrow, wood-paneled wall toward the sound of smooth jazz and the potent smell of cigar smoke. Every inch of the walls is devoted to at least three generations of family photos, ranging from recent shots of his granddaughters’ soccer tournaments all the way back to time-faded wedding portraits of him and his late wife.
