TWENTY-SEVEN

TEN minutes later, I was riding shotgun next to the last man I wanted to be with on this (or any other) planet.

While Matt guided our battered van through the heavy crosstown traffic, we sat in tense silence. Then we hit the Queensboro Bridge, and cars and trucks began moving around us like they’d entered the first lap of the Indy 500.

I checked the clock on the dashboard. “I’m surprised the congestion is letting up. It’s not even six o’clock.”

“It’s Friday,” Matt informed me. “In New York, rush hour starts earlier—”

“And ends earlier. Right, I remember that.”

“But you didn’t remember it was Friday, did you?”

“No . . .” I didn’t like talking to Matt, either, so I reached forward to turn on the radio. He immediately turned it off.

“Not a good idea,” he said. “Sorry, but you still aren’t oriented to this time period. News on the radio may shake you up. Let’s take things slow.”

I sat back and folded my arms. “How about an oldies station? Do you still have those?”

Matt snorted.

“What’s funny?”

“It’s just . . . an age thing. I’ll forever think of oldies as songs from the sixties. But ‘oldies’ these days means eighties music.”

“That seems wrong to me, too—for an entirely different reason—but at least I’ll recognize the tunes.”

“Okay . . .” Matt turned to an FM station, currently playing Huey Lewis. “But I warn you, the second they go to a station break, it’s off again.”

“Fine.”

I turned my attention to the scenery. By now night had fallen, and the East River was stretching out darkly below us. I’d crossed this river many times during our marriage to meet Matt’s late-arriving planes at LaGuardia Airport.

I was so pathetic, so gullible, always so eager to throw my arms around my “darling” husband’s neck and welcome him home.

What a fool I was.

I risked a glance in his direction, at that familiar masculine profile, the one I’d fallen so pathetically in love with, and felt the searing disgust over his betrayals rise inside me again.

Matt remained focused on the traffic, oblivious to my glare, which was probably for the better, since, as everyone kept telling me, my state of mind was out-of-date. Somewhere, in all the years that passed between us, I forgave my ex-husband. Now (apparently) we were not only business partners but close friends.

Yeah, right.

I returned my stare to the dark river, a fitting description of my present mood. I always thought of the undulating water as a black moat, separating the cloud-scraping castles of glamorous Manhattan from the rusty warehouses and worn-down row houses of working-class Queens.

Not anymore.

To my blinking astonishment, the Queens’ side of the river had risen with sleek glass-and-steel skyscrapers that rivaled New York’s poshest pillars. It looked so wrong to me, so out of place, but I couldn’t deny the physical fact. Like a towering argument in Matt’s favor, I saw the concrete evidence—

Things really have changed.

And Matt was right. It was all too much.

Feeling overwhelmed again and slightly unsteady, I turned my focus back to the “oldies” FM station, now playing (aptly enough) “Sister Christian” by Night Ranger.

Closing my eyes, I tried to calm myself further by remembering something pleasant from my past. This time I reached for a very old but beloved memory: baking crusty Italian rolls with my nonna, pans and pans of them, for her little grocery store.

I smiled as I turned the picture pages of childhood, seeing my grandmother alive again, happily teaching me how to proof the yeast, mix the sticky dough, and form those delicious rolls. I felt so grown-up and accomplished. How I loved working in her big, sunny kitchen through the years. I could still hear the radio playing upbeat music; smell the espresso brewing in the stove-top pot; and see my nonna, speaking in rapid Italian, praising my work and sharing some piece of amusing gossip that a customer or neighbor had told her.

I could nearly smell the goodness of those nut brown orbs baking, hear the crunch of the crust as I broke one open fresh from the oven and buttered its pillowy white interior, so tender and fluffy, the sweet butter dripping from my fingers and chin as I took my first bite—

My stomach growled. “Matt, have you got any food in this jalopy?”

“No. Are you hungry?”

“Starving.”

“I could eat, too, but stopping is a bad idea. I don’t want us spotted.” He thought a minute. “We could hit a drive-through.”

“Do you know of any in this part of Queens?”

At the next red light, Matt consulted his prepaid phone.

“Really?” I said. “Your phone will tell you where to find a drive-through?”

“Convenient, isn’t it? And in more ways than one.”

“What do you mean?”

Once again, he flashed that infuriating smile. “You’ll see.”