“I’d like it back,” she said.

“Of course,” I said. “I’m so—” I stopped at Mrs. Finnerman’s scream.

“Ow! Ow!” She flung her mug on the table, newspapers absorbing the remainders of her foggy yellow tea. “Ohhhh!” Mrs. Finnerman clawed at her temples, her eyes crunched shut.

“Kathleen!” Aaron cried at the same time I did. “Mrs. Finnerman!”

“My medicine,” she moaned, “by the sink.”

Aaron and I rushed into the kitchen. He made it to the sink first, pushing aside dish detergent and sponges. “I don’t see it!” he called.

“Bathroom!” came her strangled response.

I knew where the bathroom was, and I beat Aaron this time. On the sink’s counter was a small orange prescription bottle, the instructions curved around the label: “Take one at the first sign of pain.”

“Mrs. Finnerman, here.” I shook a pill into my hand, and a member of the crew offered her his bottle of water. She put the pill on her tongue and drank.

“My migraines,” she whispered. Rocking back and forth, her fingernails white on either side of her head, she began to weep. “I don’t know why I thought I could do this.” She held her head tighter. “I never should have agreed to this. This is too much. It’s just too much.”

“Can I give you a ride back to the hotel?” Aaron offered in Mrs. Finnerman’s driveway.

I motioned to the street. “I have my car, thanks.”

Aaron squinted at the house, slanting in evening’s gray limbo. It had been beautiful and bright once, but that was long before even Arthur lived there. I tried to imagine it as the Bradley girls would have seen it fifty years ago, traveling from all over the country to receive a top-notch education that they would never put to use once husbands and babies took priority. “Not to take anything away from you,” he said. “But I think it must be harder for her than it is for anyone.”

I watched the wind snatch a leaf off a branch. “Not at all. I’ve always said that. It’s like, at least everyone else died nobly, in a way.”

“Noble,” Aaron repeated. He nodded once the word made sense. “People do love a good victim.”

“It’s a privilege I’ll never enjoy.” I frowned, feeling sorry for myself. “I know it sounds so self-pitying, but I feel cheated by that.” I didn’t admit that to Aaron, but I did to Andrew last night, sitting on the edge of his childhood bed. His parents had left for their shore house. They liked to drive out late on Friday night. Less traffic then. Why didn’t I come over for one drink before I went back to my hotel? That’s what I suggested when we tumbled into his car, the stairs from the Athletic Center still challenging our lungs. Andrew turned to answer me and furrowed his brow.

“What?” I demanded.

He reached for me. “You have something in your hair.” He pinched a section between his fingers and pulled, tugging various coordinates in my scalp that seemed to blur my thoughts, obliterate my conscience. “It’s like wood chips or something. From the underside of the desk.”

After the vodka in Andrew’s kitchen, after the tour of his house that ended in his old bedroom, Luke came up again. And again I tried to explain what he did for me, how he was evidence that I was a good, decent person. “Luke Harrison wouldn’t marry a murderess skank,” I said. “He fixes me.” I looked down at my hands, at my stunning armor. “I just want to be fixed.”

Andrew sat next to me, his thigh warming my own. There are times I’m on the subway and it’s so packed I can’t escape the legs on my left and right. New Yorkers rage about this forced physical contact, but I secretly savor it, so soothed by the heat generated between bodies I could fall asleep on the shoulder of a stranger. “Do you even love him?” Andrew asked, and my eyes fluttered, fighting exhaustion, as I thought how to answer him.

I feel anger and hatred and frustration and sadness like they’re physical fabrics. This one’s silk, this one’s velvet, this one’s crisp cotton. But I couldn’t tell you what the texture of loving Luke is anymore. I slipped my hand into Andrew’s, watched him turn my engagement ring around. “I’m too tired to answer that.”

Andrew guided me onto my back. A few tears leaked into my hairline, and I made a great honking noise as I attempted to breathe through my nose and failed. I was so nervous and hot a thermometer would have deemed me too feverish to go to school. Andrew felt my skin, boiling, tacky with sweat, and left me for a moment to turn off the lights and struggle with the window. I heard the rhythm of outside, shivered gratefully when the chill reached me several seconds later. “The cool air will help,” Andrew promised. I wanted to kiss him again, but then he tucked around me and draped his large arm across my body. I was still wearing my shoes when sleep exploded over me, rare and dazzling as a meteor shower.

Yangming was always the special-occasion dinner place. New Year’s Eve, birthdays, that sort of thing. Mom took me and the Shark there after high school graduation. Dad didn’t go, said we’d probably enjoy it more if it was just “you gals.”

Andrew’s BMW was wedged between two SUVs in the parking lot, and I had that feeling this place always gives me, rarer and rarer these days, when I pushed open the door to the restaurant and saw the nicely dressed crowd of middle-aged parents, smelled that savory air, pickled with salt and fat. Like I couldn’t wait for the next thing to happen.

After I’d left Mrs. Finnerman’s house, I called Mom and apologized, told her I really wasn’t up to going out to dinner after all.

“I’m sure it was a tough day,” Mom said, which was more than Luke had said to me in the last twenty-four hours. All I’d gotten from him was a one-line text asking how everything was going. “It’s going fine,” I wrote back. His silence made me bold.

“Good evening.” The maître d’s eyes crinkled pleasantly at the sight of someone like me. “Do you have a reservation?”

I didn’t ever get a chance to answer him. Because I heard a voice speak my name high with surprise, and I turned to see Mom and my aunt Lindy, both dressed in black dress slacks, busy patterned scarves knotted around their necks, and bracelets that tinkled every time they sipped on their water. A mom’s nice dinner uniform.

Mom and I just stared at each other while I concocted a lie to tell her. I was lucky she was standing where she was, with the bar behind her. Lucky she couldn’t see Andrew in the far corner, waiting for me. I’d texted him after I’d texted Luke, inviting him to “take advantage” of our reservation. Three little dots appeared immediately after I hit send, then disappeared. This happened two more times, before Andrew finally settled on his response. “What time?”

“I had no idea this place does takeout,” Mom said, after we’d been seated. She flipped a page of the menu. “That’s good to know.”

I smoothed my napkin in my lap. “Why? They’re not going to deliver to you or anything.”

“It’s so far,” Aunt Lindy complained. She tapped her acrylic nail against her empty glass and scolded the busboy tidying up the table next to ours. “Water?” Aunt Lindy was Mom’s younger sister. She was thinner and prettier than Mom growing up, and she wasn’t gracious about it. Mom has the upper hand now, what with Aunt Lindy’s daughter marrying a cop and her daughter marrying a Wall Street guy.

“Lin,” Mom said, “believe me, it’s worth the drive.” Like she was old hat in this place.

Mom had decided to keep the reservation even after I backed out. I don’t suppose it had anything to do with the fact that Luke had left his credit card on file to pay for the dinner. I fumbled around for a bit before telling her I’d decided to just swing by and order something to go. I’d eat back at my hotel room.