Page 196 of The Lies We Play

I have a video call with Mr. Everhart in seven hours.

I have Moises, whom I have to talk to before then.

I have a husband I have not seen in ten years on the other side of an ocean and a man I once promised always who has, apparently, been searching for me for a decade and is currently waiting for me to use a phone his people sent.

Creed has people, which shouldn’t surprise me. Didn’t he mention once that his agent promised to do anything for him? Well, he didn’t do much because he never searched for me.

I get up.

In the kitchen, I make coffee. The Bialetti hisses with the small theatrical reluctance it has been hissing with for the four years I have owned it. The plant on the windowsill leans toward the light. The cracked tile by the sink that I have been meaning to replace for two years continues to be a small daily lesson in living with imperfection.

My phone—the regular one—buzzes on the counter.

Moises.

Buongiorno, Bellissima. I am at home. I tried not to call last night because you said you needed sleep. Are you all right? May I come over? I will bring pastries.

I look at the message for a long time.

This amazing man has been with me for three years, and I . . . I thought he could do the one thing that nobody else has been able to do. Fill the emptiness in my heart. I care for him so much, but I can’t love him. God knows I’ve tried, but it’s just impossible to use your heart when it’s barely working.

What am I supposed to do? Keep going?

Maybe I have to end it today. Not because I believe I’ll go back to Creed or to my husband. No. That’s probably over. I have to do it because it’s unfair to keep the lie.

We’ll have to talk, but I can’t tell him everything. I can’t tell him about foundation fraud and what might become an investigation . . . or about my ten-year-old marriage in one morning. I can tell him some. I also need to end it so he’s not in danger.

But when do I do it?

Not today, but I can prepare him, right?

Is that even a thing? Fuck, I hate to be this woman. I’m usually an assertive, mature woman who shouldn’t be second-guessing her future. But someone is using my signature, and someone might be framing me. Also, I need to know that Hal and Creed are safe. Not today.

All that can wait a little longer.

I type back, Come over. Let me shower first. Eleven?

Eleven. I will bring sfoglie, he responds.

I laugh before texting. You always bring sfoglie.

His response makes me smile: I am consistent. It is one of my best qualities.

I shower.

The water is hot enough to feel like a small religious experience. I stand under it longer than I should, washing two days off my body—turpentine, panic, train-station coffee from yesterday morning, and the residue of a night spent in my work clothes.

I get out.

I dry off.

I put on jean and a linen shirt. The cardigan Sofia gave me for my last birthday, which I have not worn enough because it is too soft, and I have not let myself have soft things often. Today I want to be a woman who is wearing soft things. I don't interrogate the impulse.

I look at myself in the bathroom mirror.

The woman looking back has been told for a decade that she is a survivor of a tragic accident in a relationship she imagined. She has worn that story like a coat. She has worn it so long that the seams have become her.

Today I have to become someone else, I just don’t know who or how this will end.