I didn’t want to decide what to do with the rest of my life. I wanted to be selfish for once, and do something for me. Maybe I’d get over the pain of Mike’s affair and forgive him. Maybe I wouldn’t and we’d get a divorce.

  A fly buzzed by, close to my ear, and I swatted at it. “I’m figuring things out.”

  He gave me an exasperated look.

  “What?” I plucked a white chocolate chip from the top of the yogurt. “I’m figuring things out. I know you want me to just sit in a room and decide whether to stay with Mike or leave him, but that’s a big decision, Sam. He’s my husband. We have twenty years together.”

  “And he cheated on you. And you hate him.”

  “I hate him right now. I’m not sure how long that will last.”

  He sighed, then pushed the frozen yogurt toward me. “Am I preaching? I sense that I’m preaching.” He swung one leg over the concrete picnic bench. “You know that it’s my protective instinct at work. Plus, I just know so much more than everyone else. It’s hard to keep all of this brilliance to myself.”

  I acknowledged his talents with a nod. “Your self-control is admirable.”

  “Have you told Mike that you lost your job?”

  I made a face. “Kind of. He knows I’m not working right now.”

  “Well, I’ll keep my mouth shut, except to say that you look happier and healthier than I’ve ever seen you. So, whoever this guy is, I think you should give him a chance. And the same with you. Give yourself and your happiness a chance.” He stood and offered his hand, helping me to my feet. Pulling me into him, he kissed me on the top of the head and I smiled against the silk of his shirt.

  Give myself and my happiness a chance. I liked that idea. Maybe amid all his hooey, there was some gold.

  CHAPTER 27

  LILLIAN

  Two weeks into the calendar—polar bears’ skin is black, and their fur is clear, not white!—I settled in at my desk, reached for the day’s fact, and stopped—surprised to find the clunky box missing. I stared at the blank spot in between the desk phone and a mango-pineapple candle that had been a Christmas gift from Mike’s mother.

  I checked the floor, on the chance that someone had knocked it off, but the Spanish tile was clear, and nothing else on the desk was askew. Rising, I circled the edge of the furniture and looked closer. Nothing. I checked the desk’s drawers, then wandered out into the hall. “Mike?”

  He wasn’t in the living or dining room, and I spotted movement outside the kitchen window. Walking over to the sink, I peered through the glass and saw him fiddling with the lock on the backyard shed. Heading toward the back door, I stole a handful of red grapes from a bowl on the counter, then paused by the trash can. There, crooked atop coffee grounds and a crumpled Pepsi can, was the calendar. I carefully pulled it out, confused. Setting it on the counter, I opened the back door and yelled for Mike.

  It took him a few minutes, in which time I decided the calendar was ruined. It had black, sticky grounds along the back and in the battery compartment, which had been opened. Cooking oil had soaked the edge of the pages, and I was pissed by the time he brushed his shoes off on the mat and opened the door. “Yeah?”

  “Did you throw this away?” I gestured to the calendar.

  “That’s yours?”

  “Yeah, it’s mine. Who else’s would it be?”

  “Where’d you get it?”

  This was something I was unprepared for, and I stumbled on the response. “It was a gift.”

  “A gift?” He stepped closer, his eyes dark, and I tried to understand where his tension was coming from. Had I been gazing at the calendar with doe eyes, my chin cupped in my hands? Did I absentmindedly draw hearts in the border? Or was this just his intuition, in the same way that I had gut-felt that he was being unfaithful? “A gift from who?”

  “Just a barista at a coffee shop.” It was the first lie I arrived on, and hopefully one with enough truth to pass his bullshit detector.

  “A barista gave you a calendar and you didn’t find that odd?”

  “It was, like, a hundredth-customer-of-the-day kind of prize,” I defended, and that was good, very believable. My patting on the back was interrupted by his next question.

  “Which coffee shop?”

  “What?” I let out a strangled laugh. “Why do you care? It’s a calendar. Since when did you become so interested in my coffee habits?”

  “Which. Coffee. Shop?” He leaned closer, and I could smell the sour tinge of orange juice on his breath.

  A Starbucks seemed unbelievable, so I grabbed the first local one I could think of. “The one over by the mall, near the shoe repair shop.”

  Great. With my luck, he’d stop by and drill them about the giveaway. What a stupid lie. Why was he even asking about this? I should have just said that I bought it. Was it too late to change my story?

  I crossed my arms over my chest and tried to change the direction of the conversation back to the fact that he’d thrown away my calendar. “I don’t understand why you put it in the trash.”

  He started, then stopped, like my car when we were trying to teach Jacob how to drive a stick. I watched, fascinated, while he struggled to find a response. This was jealousy, surely. Was it possible that he knew, or suspected, something about David?

  A warm calm settled over me, like a blanket had been wrapped around me. He did care. Me, stepping out, would or did affect my husband in some way.

  I’d really begun to question that, over the last few years. The confirmation of it, even if it existed in the form of a ruined fact-a-day desk calendar . . . was comforting. I bit the inside of my lip to keep from smiling and watched as he reached back and twisted the knob of the back door.

  “Well?” I pressed.

  “A coffee shop just gave it to you. When? How long ago?”

  “I don’t know,” I grumbled—though I did know, because I had pulled off the already-past days and started on the day he gave it to me: October 3. It was exactly two weeks ago. “Two weeks? Three? Maybe four?” I added the extra time in case he went to the coffee shop and started asking questions, which my normal husband would never do, but this new Mike—attentive, always-around Mike—I was beginning to fear he actually would.

  “Four weeks?” He seemed aghast at the news. “You’ve had this calendar for four weeks?”

  I let out an awkward laugh. “Maybe? Why are you freaking out about this?”

  He let out an irritated breath and swung the back door open. “Just start clearing things with me, Lill. Jesus Christ.” Storming out the door, he let it slam shut behind him with a bang that reverberated the tile underneath my bare feet. I turned my head and watched through the kitchen window as he returned to the shed.

  Oh my word. I looked at the sad state of the calendar, then carefully dropped it back into the trash can.

  I should have felt guilty, bringing a gift from David into my home, especially since our friendship had taken a definite and authoritative leap into the territory of an affair. But I didn’t. I felt reckless and brave, like a woman who went after what she wanted and said the hell with any repercussions.

  I felt like Taylor.

  CHAPTER 28

  LILLIAN

  “We should go on a trip together.” David floated beside me, his back flat on a paddleboard, his fingers loosely intertwined with mine. “What’s your favorite place in the world?”

  “My favorite place?” I closed my eyes. “Hmm. I don’t know. I haven’t been to many places.”

  “Where do you normally go as a family?”

  I laughed. “Boring places. My husband would make a horrible travel agent. And he’s afraid of flying, so we always end up in the car for days.”

  Mike’s flight phobia was a long-standing joke, one that was extremely inconvenient, especially when he wanted to go to the Corn Palace in South Dakota or the Sierra Blanca Peak in New Mexico. We’d tried to make the best of it, renting giant RVs and spreading the trips out over two weeks, as we visited every small town and college friend along the way, but I was green with envy over social media friends who just jumped on a plane and were (ta-da!) in Florida that afternoon.

  “Boring?” David asked. “Like what?”

  “You don’t want to know.” I dangled one leg in the water and wondered if a passing shark might bite it off. We had taken his boat four miles out, to a sandbar dotted with a single palm tree. I pulled my leg back onto the board. “It’s embarrassingly basic.” Basic, a term I’d heard one of Jacob’s friends use, was apparently cool and Taylor-worthy.

  “I want to know.” He squeezed my hand and turned his head toward mine, arresting me with his moss-colored eyes. “I want to know everything about you.”

  It was true. He listened without getting distracted or changing the subject to himself. And he absorbed everything he heard. While I couldn’t get Mike to remember our anniversary each year, David remembered that I like sunflower seeds on my salad and that I had a dentist appointment Tuesday at three.

  So I told him. I told him about the annual trips we took to Winnemucca, Nevada. I told him about the time the car broke down and we stayed on an Indian reservation, and the time that Jacob got food poisoning during an overnight hike up Mexican Hat plateau, and even about how Mike sings folk songs as he drives. He laughed, and asked all the right questions, and I loved that he respected my marriage and acknowledged Mike’s presence and history in my life.

  In between the true stories, I tried to inject Taylor-likely events, but surprisingly enough, David was always more interested and responsive to the normal parts of my marriage and life. Maybe, I—as Lillian—was more interesting than I knew.

  Sharing the true stories made our affair feel less dirty, but maybe it shouldn’t have. I closed my eyes and tried to picture Mike, floating out in the ocean and talking about me to a younger, fitter woman, one who probably laughed at the story of when I got diarrhea while we were in Cabo, or when I embarrassed him and Jacob with a drunk karaoke rendition of “Hips Don’t Lie” by Shakira.

  Dammit. The truth of the matter was, I hated the idea of Mike talking about me to her. I preferred the idea of her being clueless, with no idea that he had a child and wife. I pinned my lips together and vowed not to mention him again to David.

  My chest cramped with guilt, and I rolled onto my stomach on the warm fiberglass. “Want to paddle over to the island?” I nodded toward the single palm tree, which David had already vowed to climb bare-handed.

  “Let’s do it.” He shook his head and water droplets flew outward. Pulling my board toward him, he leaned over and pressed a kiss on my shoulder before pushing off toward the sandbar. I dipped my hands into the water to paddle, and I didn’t love him but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t love this new version of my life.

  TWO WEEKS BEFORE THE DEATH

  CHAPTER 29

  MIKE

  Either my wife was lying or someone else was.

  I wasted three days at that damn coffee shop, stopping in at various intervals and shifts until I spoke to all of the management and barista staff. All denied knowledge of any sort of giveaway, and I got skeptical looks at the mention of a calendar. I considered bringing the actual item in, but I already looked senile. Holding a plastic bag with a partially disassembled desk calendar wouldn’t have helped.

  It’s possible that the employee in question didn’t work there anymore or—and more likely—that the calendar came from somewhere else. I needed to follow Lillian more, find out if she had any new “friends,” but this was not a time when I could slack on work—not right now, not when the major players were in town and my ass was on the grill.

  So I took other steps, starting with bugs in her car, at her desk, and in our bedroom. Each morning, on my way to work, I listened to the prior day’s recordings. Each evening, I looked over her phone records. So far, it was a lot of shuffling sounds and boring conversations.

  Whatever it was, whoever it was, I’d find out. I always did.

  CHAPTER 30

  LILLIAN

  David gave me a necklace with a pendant of a small golden fish. I fastened it around my neck and mentally swore to never take it off. My tan turned golden and I stopped dyeing my gray hairs, letting the sun bleach the surrounding strands.

  Unlike the calendar, the necklace didn’t catch Mike’s attention. His contrite behavior continued, though there were moments when I could sense his growing annoyance with my newfound independence.

  Good. I was glad he was frustrated. I’d spent the last year clinging to him while he went on “business trips” and secretly dated someone else. Just because he had been caught and supposedly ended it, that didn’t mean I had to instantly forgive him.

  I liked his new pursuit and courtship of me. Was it wrong for me to allow it? Sam thought so. There were times I agreed with him and times I didn’t care. So what if I was also guilty? Unlike him, I had never spent the night with David, or spent money on him, or lied for months on end. I’d had only six weeks with David. Six weeks and sex twice.

  The sex wasn’t satisfying. That was the only missing piece of our equation. It was awkward, being naked with a new person. Mike knew my body, each button and how I liked it pressed. We’d learned those buttons together, over years and countless experiences. David had a very rough, caveman style that was filled with vocal declarations, sweat, and his version of passion—which was very different from Mike’s. The night David gave me the fish necklace, I pulled Mike to me in bed, and he moved on top without hesitation, my underwear dragged down, our bodies meeting in quiet harmony. His hands had rested on either side of my head as he thrust, and then I’d rolled over and he lay on top of me, his breath huffing in my ear. There had been another minute of thrusts, and then he was done.

  Not a word between us.

  I’d rolled back to my side of the bed, and he’d returned to his, and it had been exactly what I’d needed. Not an Olympic event, not even longer than six or seven minutes. Perfect.

  Now I sat on the grass, next to Lenny. We were on the north hill of the cemetery, the angle such that it almost felt like you were upright. Above us, the sun hid behind a solid line of clouds, putting a cool and eerie shadow over the field of graves.

  There was a gentle nudge on my right side and I looked down to see him offering his flask. “Want a sip?”

  “No.” I gave a contented exhale. “My luck, I’d get pulled over on the way home.”

  “You don’t have to chug it. You can just sip. It’s peanut butter whiskey. Actually tastes pretty good.”

  “Well, then. It’s a good thing I declined. Peanut allergy.” I closed my eyes, enjoying the breeze on my cheeks. “I love the smell of grass, right after they cut it.”

  “So if you’re fired, what are you doing all day?” He eyed me, and even drunk, it felt like he could see me more clearly than most.

  “I don’t know. I’m working down at the docks in Marina del Rey right now, running errands for boat owners.”

  He squinted at me. “Doesn’t sound like you.”

  “Yeah, well.” I kicked off a fly that had landed on my shin. “I’m trying to figure out who ‘me’ is.”

  “Do you miss writing?”

  “Do you miss arresting people?” I shot back, immediately regretting the dig. Like me, he hadn’t had much of a choice. You show up at work drunk as a cop, you tend to lose your job pretty quickly.

  “Yeah,” he said quietly. “I do. Not the arresting bit, but the investigations. The hunt. The clues.” He sat fully upright. “I was a good detective, Lill. And you’re a good writer. The best I’ve ever seen.”

  “Yeah, well.” I tugged at a blade of grass. “I’m not missing it so far.”

  He pulled at the collar of his cemetery uniform and changed the subject. “You already visited Marcella?”

  “Nah. I parked on the other side, so I haven’t made it that far yet.”

  He climbed to his feet, his knees popping as he stood, and held out his hand to help me up. “I’ll go with you. I just planted a new monkey flower bush beside her.”

  I took his hand, my feet almost leaving the ground as he pulled me to standing. I steadied myself, then brushed off the back of my jean shorts and my shirt. “Thanks.”

  The appreciation went unnoticed. He was already walking down the hill and toward Marcella’s grave.

  ONE WEEK BEFORE THE DEATH

  CHAPTER 31

  LILLIAN

  Normally, I left the docks by five thirty, but I was starting to get slack. On days when David was in town, I lingered. I liked the way his eyes stuck to me. If I bent over and picked something up, he’d watch in appreciation. I liked the weight of his lust, how it hung in the air, even if the sex wasn’t great.

  On Tuesday, Mike was in San Francisco on “business,” and I accepted David’s invitation for dinner. He bought me a dress, a knee-length, gold, slinky number that clung to my breasts and hips and swirled out when I spun. It was wrapped in tissue paper and in a box from an expensive store in Beverly Hills, a lacy bra-and-panty set also enclosed.

  I showered in the small bathroom on his boat and bumped my elbow against the wall as I dried my hair. There wasn’t great light, but I still managed with the extra makeup I kept in the glove box of my car. I slid the dress over my head, then stood in front of the full-length mirror and stared at a sexy, vibrant woman who looked nothing like Lillian Smith.

  “Wow.” David came up behind me and put his hands on my shoulders and lowered his mouth to my neck, kissing along the slope of skin. I smiled. Tonight would be another night of sex. I was mentally prepared for it, even needed it. Not the pleasure, but the hunger, the attention, the look, and touch of a man who desired me. “You’re going to break the heart of every man in the restaurant.”

  Even if it was ridiculous, I preened at the idea, and when we walked down the dock and I saw the limo at the curb, I felt like Cinderella, being whisked off to the ball.