Every year, August fills Emma with melancholy. Though fall brings the thrill of fresh school supplies, fresh students, and a fresh start, it’s August’s job to toll the bells on summer. Soon, Emma will return to the classroom, and gone will be the deliciously lazy mornings over coffee and a crossword, sleeping in and staying up too late, reading whatever book she feels like reading for as long as she can keep her eyes open.
When Portia was young, they went to the country club to swim in the pool and buy treats at the concession stand—ICEE Pops and fudge bars and too-salty popcorn streaked yellow with artificial butter. As she grew, Portia attended tennis camp and golf camp and a one-week theater intensive called “Midsomer Mayhem” for which the club hired actors and directors straight off the stages of the San Francisco Theater District. Those hours Emma spent taking walks and reorganizing drawers and completing all the tiny household projects she could only dream about during the school year.
Summers beheld a secret garden–like charm.
Then August would arrive, and each morning she’d wake with a thin new layer of accountability that, by the end of the month, would have hardened around her, a shell just thick enough to survive the upcoming nine-month teaching journey.
Today, August 1st, Emma wakes feeling the early ticklish signs of her annual metamorphosis. The sun filters through her bedroom curtains, and yet she has no sense of the time, of whether she’s overslept or ought to close her eyes and drift away.
“Hey, Siri.” Her phone lights on her bedside table. “Do I need to get out of bed?”
Until Devin left, Emma didn’t realize that he was the clock around which she graduated time. Every morning, he rose at 5:30 a.m., went for a run, showered, and left for work. During the school year, she’d shower while he was running, then wake Portia. Come June, his stepping out of bed started the day’s passage. Though he was so quiet she hardly stirred, her mind took note. She hadn’t used an alarm for twenty years.
Of course, it’s the natural way of things for a child to grow up and leave the nest. When Portia left for college, Emma eventually adapted to being alone in the house while Devin was at work. After the divorce, she even began to enjoy quiet evenings all to herself.
But waking up alone continues to leave her disoriented and unmoored. Thirty-two days from now, Portia and Lyle will become their own family, Devin will be preparing for second-chance fatherhood, and she will return to a house in which the only voice she hears is the stunted robotic tenor of her AI assistant.
Siri says, “I’ll let you decide if you wish to wake up. But if you’d like me to play your Morning Mix playlist, just ask.”
“No, thank you.” Even Earth, Wind & Fire’s “September” won’t break this spell. Emma needs a jolt to the system, the benefits of electroshock therapy without the subsequent memory loss or the sensation she imagines feels like being plugged into an electrical socket. Boredom isn’t the problem; there’s no end to her to-do list. Her life simply lacks...something she can’t put her finger on.
“Hey, Siri. Am I depressed?”
“Depression is a clinical condition that should only be diagnosed by a medical professional. However, I can tell you that some of the main symptoms of depression include feelings of sadness or hopelessness, loss of interest in pleasurable activities, a shortened temper, fatigue—”
“Siri, stop.”
Emma speaks to her therapist every week. If she were depressed, Nikki would have said so.
She turns, angling her face to the windows. It’s late, probably already 9:00 a.m. Now that the brain fog has begun to lift, she can see that morning is fleeing. And still she lies, unprepared to move.
This encroaching listlessness isn’t entirely mysterious. Try as she might to deny it, Emma misses Ben, and it’s his fault. He charmed his way into her life, reanimated the quiet moments of her days and nights, made her laugh, got her to talk. And then, he walked away.
She knew she wasn’t ready to date, and she said no. Repeatedly. But he persisted. Broke her down. And now here she is, missing him and hating herself for it.
“Dammit.” Emma throws back the covers and swings her feet to the floor. Kanga and Roo startle; she never moves this quickly.
“Hush,” she says. “I have a bone to pick with someone and I don’t want to lose my nerve.”
Emma did lose her nerve, of course. As soon as she had heard Ben’s voice, her anger went running for cover.
“Emma!” he’d trilled. “This is a welcome surprise.”
She steeled herself against his charm, knowing that she only wanted him because he’d rejected her. And she’d picked up the phone to tell him he’d broken his promise to reach out as soon as he returned to the States.
“I missed you, Ben.” Where the hell had that come from? She smacked her forehead hard enough to see stars. “What I mean is, would you like to meet me for dinner?”
Clearly, she was having an aneurysm.
“I would love nothing more. I’m so pleased you called.”
And so, here they sit, facing each other over a round bistro table at Emma’s favorite, Plum River. The restaurant is only a mile from her house, meaning that any of her friends or neighbors might see them. Oh, well, let the gossip begin. She is saying Yes to dinner with an old friend.
Or is she saying No to caring what other people think?
“Ben, would you like to choose the wine?”
He picks up the list. “I’ll be happy to. But didn’t you say this was one of your favorite restaurants? I’d love to hear what you recommend.”
“Oh—” Emma knows wine. But she doesn’t know what it’s like to dine with a man who doesn’t flaunt his enological expertise like a silverback gorilla beating his chest. “I suppose I could.”
Suppose she could? Good grief.
Ben hedges. “Unless you’d prefer not to?”
“Actually,” she reaches for the wine list and snaps it open with a flourish. “I know just the thing.”
Half a bottle in, Emma and Ben share an heirloom tomato salad and relive the night they attended a “Weird Al” Yankovic concert at the state fair.
“I can’t believe he’s still around,” she says. “We only went because the tickets were practically free!”
Ben’s face is lovely when he laughs. “He’s more successful now than ever. A millionaire several times over.”
“Maybe I should quit teaching and learn to play the accordion.”
“I’d pay to see that.”
He winks, and Emma goes hot and sweaty in all her unmentionable places. She leans in, knowing her blouse is likely falling into the salad, but what the hell does she care? She wore black for a reason. “Ben, I have to ask—”
He anticipates her question. She can see all the knowing signs in his Bradley Cooper grin.
“Emma?”
This is not Ben’s voice. This is Carlton Willis. And he’s standing too close, having appeared out of nowhere. All her good sweats go cold.
“What a wonderful surprise bumping into you. We haven’t seen each other in, what is it now, ten or fifteen years?”
It hasn’t been anywhere close to ten years. He called her last month.
From the look of him, he’s in politician mode—dark suit, white shirt, classic tie. His haircut can’t be more than an hour old. “Carlton.” It comes out as a statement rather than a greeting, though he’s lucky she says anything at all.
“I’m here with a few members of my campaign staff. Let’s connect soon, what do you say?” Nothing moves on his face as he speaks, nor are there wrinkles where a fifty-something-year-old man ought to have them. He extends a hand.
Emma does not take it. “Carlton, meet Benjamin Guy. Ben and I went to high school together.”
“Benjamin Guy...” Carlton pauses. “Have we met?”
Ben stands, displaying his professional side, extending his own hand toward Carlton’s. “Not officially. But our worlds do overlap from time to time.”
“Ah. Perhaps we’ve shared the stage at a conference or two.”
“Something like that.” Ben takes his seat again, and Carlton takes the hint.
“Well, I’ll leave the two of you to your dinner and go join my team.” He doesn’t turn before meeting Emma’s glance one last time. “It’s been too long.”
When he finally departs, Emma’s hands are shaking. Two coincidences in as many weeks confirm to her that this wasn’t a coincidence at all.
“So, Carlton Willis, huh?” Ben keeps his voice low. “You keep some heady company.”
“No.” The word comes so quickly she feels as if she’s vomited it. “Not anymore.”
The evening is ruined. There’s no recapturing the lighthearted spirit of repartee she’d been enjoying.
“Something about the expression on your face tells me Carlton won’t be getting your vote next year.” Ben’s expression is gentle, but he’s skirting the edges of a topic Emma is not ready to discuss.
She smooths the already smooth napkin across her lap. “We have a history. In that we dated.” Ah, but they’d done so much more than that. “Before Devin. It didn’t end well.”
“I see.” Ben doesn’t push, though he looks as if he has more to say.
Anyone would have a thousand questions, and the fact that he doesn’t ask them opens a tiny door in Emma’s heart. “Let’s just say that I wasn’t surprised to hear the recent allegations from his colleagues.”
“Oh.”
Neither of them speaks for the next minute.
“Is it rude to say I kind of hate him?”
“Rude? No.” Ben exudes a forgiveness she hasn’t felt outside of her therapist’s office in a long time. “In fact, I’d go so far as to say you’re not alone in that sentiment.”
She assumes he’s referring to the assistant.
But she’s wrong.
Ben doesn’t just lean across the table this time. He stands and moves his chair until they’re sitting side by side. It feels a little too “teenagers sharing a drink at the malt shop” for her, but she also wishes he’d come closer.
“There’s some well-informed scuttlebutt going around the PR world right now. Suffice it to say, Carlton has reason to worry about people coming forward with complaints.”
“I see.” The news is meant to help, but Emma wishes she hadn’t heard it. For the past two and a half decades, she’s consoled herself with the belief that their dynamic together allowed for Carlton’s behavior. That surely no other woman provoked him the way she had, and therefore no other woman had experienced the same pain and fear.
How dare Ben bash her delusion against the rocks.
He senses her agitation. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“No, it’s—” A familiar anger fires deep inside her. “You just apologized for telling me about another man’s behavior!” She won’t say his name. Won’t risk giving Carlton the sick thrill of hearing it on her lips. “I hate people who slither away from disasters of their own making. At some point, they need to face the music.”
Ben loops his tie between two fingers, smoothing it. “You’re right. I ought to know better. Especially given what I do for a living.”
The waiter arrives with their entrées, stopping when he sees their modified seating arrangement.
“I’ll move,” Ben says, and returns to his place across the table.
Emma feels a lonely draft where he’d just been.