Chapter 14

Julia

Last week I was lying in bed, pretending to take a late afternoon nap but really just staring at the ceiling, when I heard a car pull up in the driveway.

My father wouldn’t be back from work until dinner. My mother was busy all day with errands and meetings. I was home alone on that sunny May day. I pulled aside the curtain and saw my sister shutting the trunk of her silver Saab.

It was like Elizabeth had forgotten, for a moment, that I was living at home. A look rippled across her face as I appeared at the top of the stairs. There she was, fresh from her junior year at college, embarking on summer break with all its possibilities—and as I dragged myself down the stairs in ratty old leggings and a T-shirt, I was there to remind her of everything that could go wrong. Failure, heartbreak. A vector for a disease she might catch, too. But the look vanished in a second, and Elizabeth threw her arms around me in a hug.

We had seen each other at Christmas and when she breezed through over spring break before hopping a flight to Belize. But those had been short, distracted visits, and the depths to which I was sinking weren’t yet clear. It was evident enough now: months had passed, my excuses were running out, and I was still hiding inside with unwashed hair and worn-out clothes. After settling at the kitchen table, Elizabeth asked me how I was. The look on her face said she wanted the full answer.

I’m okay. That’s what I’ve been saying all along, hoping that eventually I’ll trick myself into making it true. It’s been months now. I’m getting over it. I’m okay.

But I’m also, distinctly, not okay. I’m not getting over it. Sometimes I feel like I’m living on two planes: the present in Boston, which I move through physically like a hollow zombie, and that night in New York, where I’m stuck forever mentally, replaying the same disastrous sequence on a loop. The memory persists like a hot cavity. I shut my eyes, and I see Evan. I try to fall asleep, and I see Evan. And I see him as he was at the very end, his face written with disappointment. That’s the worst part. It wasn’t shock or anger. It was like he’d always known that it would come to this. Four years of my life disappeared into that expression. All the good things that had come before were negated by that pitch-black reminder of what I was capable of—of the person I had been all along.

I called my mother later that December night. I was jobless, single, with nowhere to live. But she was too busy to help, so I moved myself out. I shipped a box of books home. I took a taxi to Penn Station with two bulging suitcases in the trunk. A man in a Santa costume stood on the corner of 34th Street, ringing a bell, collecting for the Salvation Army. Tourists streamed down the sidewalks, eyes shining in the holiday lights, on their way to Radio City or the Rockefeller Center tree. It all receded so quickly. The train pulled out of the station, right on time for once, and a few hours later I was in Boston. As fast as that. My life in New York had ended.

It was like I’d been hit by a truck. My joints felt sore, my skin tender. I hibernated through the winter, confining my movements to the bedroom, the kitchen, the den. I slept too many hours every night—sleep was the only thing I wanted to do, the only way to make the time pass. Lately, though, I’m plagued by a different problem: insomnia. Maybe my body is trying to tell me to move on after the glut of the last several months, but my mind won’t let me. So I’m awake late into the night. Nothing works: warm milk, hot baths, prescription pills. I spend hours going for drives through the darkened suburbs, past shuttered windows and empty parking lots, with only the radio for company. My mother hates my middle-of-the-night peregrinations and the way I sleep so late, wasting daylight hours. So now I’m presented with a double serving of guilt: for what I did last year in New York, and for the way I am constantly failing to get over it.

An hour after Elizabeth arrived, my mother got home from her errands, carrying a box from the local bakery. She beamed when she saw Elizabeth sitting in the kitchen. She was the good daughter, the successful daughter. Elizabeth would never derail her own life, like I did. She was too smart for that. She was only home for a few days before moving to New York for the summer, where she was interning for a famous painter, Donald Gates, in his Tribeca studio.

Elizabeth had just turned twenty-one. We had her favorite meal that night: lasagna and garlic bread, then chocolate cake from the bakery for dessert. Elizabeth leaned forward and blew out the candles, their light pale and flickering in the spring twilight. She looked up at me a few minutes later, while I pushed a swab of frosting around my plate. “Jules?” she said quietly, but I just shook my head. Evan’s birthday had been last week. It was always twinned, in my mind, with Elizabeth’s. I was melancholy not because I’d been thinking of him. I was melancholy because, despite my fixation on Evan, I’d forgotten about his birthday until that moment. Time was passing. I was forgetting things, the specific things. Evan was becoming an abstract longing. I was losing him all over again.

Elizabeth’s college schedule complemented my insomnia, and we lay awake that night in her bed, the lamp in the corner casting exaggerated shadows across the walls. A cluster of glow-in-the-dark stars floated on the ceiling, a reminder of the lives we had lived in these bedrooms before going away and trying to become grown-ups.

“I wish I could stay longer,” she said. “It’s kind of nice, being home.”

“Me, too. It’s so quiet here without you.”

She picked at the dark polish on her thumbnail. “You could come visit.”

“New York?”

“My roommate is going to be gone most weekends. Her boyfriend lives in DC.”

“I haven’t gone back since I moved out.”

“So? You’re not banned from the city. It’s not like they’re going to turn you away at the border.”

“Very funny.”

“You have to meet Donald. He’s so great.”

I made some noise of equivocation.

“Come on. What else are you doing up here? It could be good for you, you know—a distraction. Get out of the house.”

“You sound just like Mom.”

“Ugh. Shut up. You know what I mean. It’d be fun. We can go out together.”

“I’ll think about it.”

She sighed. “I’m not tired yet.”

“Welcome to my world.”

Elizabeth lifted a finger and delicately scratched the side of her nose. She was so deliberate, so economical in her gestures. The fidgety tendencies I’d noticed among girls our age—twisting their hair, touching their faces, biting their lips—Elizabeth was completely devoid of. When had she become so mature, so self-possessed? I had been so immersed in my own life the last five years that I had completely ignored hers. I wondered what else I’d missed.

“So Mom’s being hard on you?” she said. “I bet she’s going crazy right now, with you hanging around all day. She probably hates it.”

I laughed. “Yeah, you can tell?”

“Maybe it’s good for her. This will teach her a lesson. Not everyone can have perfect children all the perfect time.” She paused. “But she’s always been hard on you. Did you ever notice that? They were both so tough. They set such high standards. I think I had it easier. They didn’t pay as much attention to me.”

I propped myself up on my elbows, staring at her. “Are you kidding me? You? You are one hundred percent the favorite.”

“I’m not saying that. It’s just—I don’t know. With you it’s like they had to check every box. You were the first kid. Once you did everything you were supposed to do, they kind of let go of me. Don’t get me wrong, it’s been great for me. But I always felt kind of bad for you. Everything you did had to be a certain way. Like, do you remember the first time you brought Evan home?”

“Jesus,” I groaned. “Poor Evan. That was such a disaster.”

It had been terrible. A weekend toward the end of freshman year, we took the train up to Boston for the first parental meet and greet. My dad spent the whole night on the phone with a client. Elizabeth had a friend over for dinner, and they did their best to distract us by chattering about high school gossip. But my mother’s mood descended on the table like an unpleasant odor. She decided, instantly, that she didn’t like Evan. That he was all wrong for me. That he would never, ever live up to Rob. Evan was sweating through his shirt during dinner.

So your parents own a grocery store, I hear, she said, eyebrow arched as she dragged her knife through her green beans.

That’s right, Evan said. It’s doing really well. They’ve started stocking a lot more organics lately. It’s catching on even in our little town.

Elizabeth laughed at the memory. “That was great, actually. She didn’t have a clue what to say to him. I still remember the look on her face when you told her you were dating a Canadian hockey player. It was worth it just for that.”

Her laughter stopped as soon as the words escaped her. “Oh, God. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—sorry.”

I shook my head. “It’s fine, Lizzie. Tell me more about Donald.”

The night crept by, the house silent around us except for the occasional chime of the hall clock downstairs. Around 3:00 a.m., Elizabeth finally started to yawn. She drifted off while telling me about a new photo series she was working on. I tucked the blanket around her and went back to my own room, to wait for sleep.

  

And it was the truth. It was, surprisingly, fine. It was the first time I had talked about Evan with anyone since the breakup. My parents pretended it had never happened. Elizabeth, I think, had pieced together most of it, but she had some of our mother in her—she didn’t probe when the topic was too delicate. Whenever Abby brought Evan up, I tended to change the subject. She’d snapped at me once. “Julia. Seriously. Enough of this repressive WASP bullshit. We have to talk about this at some point.” There was a long silence, then she sighed. “I’m sorry. That was unfair.” But where could I begin?

“It’s just…” I’d said. “I just need more time.”

And so to finally say his name aloud was a relief. Like ice shattering. Evan. He existed. He still existed.

I thought I had rid myself of any feeling for him, so that when the break came, it would be clean and easy. Just like the switch from Rob to Evan four years earlier. Adam would be waiting, baton extended, and I would simply reach for it and keep going. But this wasn’t to be. Adam wasn’t there (how could I have ever thought he would be?), and, more important, Evan wasn’t someone I could leave behind so painlessly. At this age perhaps we take change for granted: you can adopt and discard different identities as easily as Halloween costumes, and from that comes the arrogance of thinking that you can decide when, and how, you get to change. Evan had been one chapter of my life, I thought, but for the next—for Adam—I was going to become a new kind of person.

But when everything washed away in the ensuing mess, I was left with something not so easily discarded after all: the girl I had been before everything started. The girl who had loved Evan, who had finally understood that the past didn’t have to determine what would come in the future; the girl who had learned to be happy. It seemed that I had her back now, but I worried it was too late. She doesn’t fit in anymore. But this is me. This is the real me. I so desperately don’t want to lose it, that tender flame of being.

*  *  *

I spent that December weekend trying very hard not to think about my outpouring to Adam. Through my pounding hangover that Saturday, I cleaned the apartment. I beat the rugs on the fire escape, washed the windows, scrubbed the bathtub until it shone. That night I went to Abby’s holiday party. Her apartment was cheery and cozy, garlanded with lights and tinsel, mulled cider bubbling on the stove. I drank only water, still feeling sick from the night before. Evan had mentioned the party. I’d texted him to ask if he was coming, but he didn’t respond. Whenever a wave of noise announced an arrival, I found myself hoping—for the first time in months—that it would be Evan walking through the door. I wanted something beyond our stilted interaction on the stoop that morning. I felt it dangling in the air, like a sharp blade, the danger of what we hadn’t said.

By 2:00 a.m., as the party was emptying out, I gave up and left. Evan came home later and slept for a few hours before heading back to work early Sunday morning. I woke up nervous and jittery, needing distraction from my ballooning guilt. (But guilt over what, over which part? I still didn’t quite know.) I went to the Met that afternoon, but I couldn’t focus on the art. My lack of concentration seemed like a failure, and it gave the museum an oppressive air: another reminder of my inability to engage, to find a passion, to figure it out. A tour was wending past, and I clung to it, sheltering myself in the monologue of the leader. It was dark by the time I left the museum, and I went to bed early, falling into a shallow sleep. Evan got home past midnight, and I awoke wondering if I ought to turn on the light and try to talk to him, actually talk to him. To offer a real apology. But he lingered in the living room, and I fell asleep again.

Monday morning brought a new sting. Maybe I could pretend things were fine over the weekend, but on a weekday my unemployment was impossible to ignore. I went to the coffee shop down the block and looked online for job openings. I couldn’t concentrate. The whirring and banging of the espresso machines, the tinny jazz, the yoga-toned mothers with their lattes. Distractions everywhere. I was waiting for something, but I didn’t know what. Adam hadn’t called or texted. He hadn’t said a thing since Friday night. I reach back and try to remember what I was thinking about Adam at that moment, but I can’t quite say. My memory of that time is so infected by what I feel now. Or perhaps it’s that I was starting to realize the scope of my mistake. I wasn’t fixated on Adam anymore, because Adam wasn’t the person I’d have to reckon with. Evan was.

But that can’t be entirely true. Later that Monday night, after I ventured out into the rain to pick up dinner, some thought of Adam had driven me to open my computer. At home, I shook a packet of oyster crackers across my container of too-hot soup while I navigated to the New York Observer’s website. Maybe I was curious to see whether Adam had been working all weekend. Maybe I wanted to check the news after ignoring it for a few days. Or maybe an alarm bell was already ringing in my subconscious, finally forcing me to acknowledge the trigger on which I’d been resting my finger for months. I had only lifted one spoonful of soup to my mouth before I saw the headline strung across the top of the website in big, bold black letters for the whole world to see.

*  *  *

Last night I thought about calling Evan. It was near midnight, and I was driving down the empty roads in our neighborhood, killing time, the changing colors of the stoplights cascading and reflecting like a beat on the wet surface of the pavement. I pulled over, the car idling askew in a parking lot while I dialed his number. My pulse skittered. I wanted so badly to hear his voice. My finger was hovering over the button when my mind flashed to him, two hundred miles south in New York, his phone vibrating on the surface of his desk or on some bar. Lifting it to check the caller and grimacing at the sight of my name, silencing it without a second thought.

What could I say? What could I ever say that would explain what I had done? I switched off my phone and turned back toward home.

*  *  *

I read the article on my computer through blurring vision. What stood out the most was the byline at the top of the story. Adam McCard.

It was so obvious. I was so stupid. Through confidential sources within the company. Everything I’d chosen to ignore or dismiss or rationalize through the fall—every sign had been pointing to this outcome. Adam had been playing me all along.

I called Adam over and over. It rang before going to voice mail, then eventually it went straight to voice mail. Why bother answering? He knew exactly why I was calling. And I had served my purpose. I sent him a string of texts, my hands shaking. Call me back. WTF?? What the hell is this? I felt a hot bellow of anger at him, but especially at myself. I had done this. This was my fault.

I stared at my phone from across the room, wanting to smash it into a hundred pieces. I couldn’t think straight. I needed to go somewhere, out, away. In my rush to leave, grabbing a raincoat and enough money to get myself a drink, I left my phone sitting on the coffee table. I realized my error belatedly, in a bar five blocks from home, halfway through my first drink. But I wonder now if I did it on purpose. Evan would have seen the article, would be searching for an explanation, wondering who the betrayer was. He deserved an answer. Maybe I wanted to give Evan the final pleasure of catching me in the act, and myself the punishment of finally being caught.

*  *  *

Yesterday Elizabeth waved good-bye through the open window of the taxi that was taking her to the station, for her train to New York. She insisted on taking a taxi, saying she was too old for a big scene at the train station. I was walking back up the stairs to the front porch when my phone rang.

I could picture Abby on the other end, taking a break from her usual Sunday run around the reservoir, hair pulled back in a ponytail, dodging strollers and dogs. I sank into the wicker chair that my parents’ interior designer had artfully placed in the corner of the porch, where it caught the summer breeze and a view of the blooming hydrangea. The yard was brilliantly green. Abby had only a few weeks of teaching left in the school year, then a summer of freedom. She and Jake, who had finally quit his job, were planning a trip to Spain, maybe Morocco, maybe Greece—a wandering months-long itinerary.

Abby cleared her throat. “I have to tell you something.”

I wondered for a flash if she and Jake were moving in together. I never would have predicted that she’d wind up with a preppy finance guy, but they just clicked. The rule book, as far as I could tell, had been thrown out the window. She was happy, and I was happy for her. I had decided, some months earlier, to bury the secret of me and Jake somewhere deep and unfindable. It was something I was glad to let go of.

“What’s up?” I said.

“Jake’s parents are getting a divorce.”

I wasn’t surprised. Perhaps a little that I was hearing this from her—surely my parents had known?—but the Fletchers hadn’t seemed happy for a long time.

“Oh, Abby, I’m sorry. That sucks. How’s Jake doing?”

“He’s okay. But that’s not really—it’s not just the divorce. It’s—well. Dot found out Henry has been cheating on her.”

Of course. He and Eleanor weren’t exactly subtle.

“What? Really? That’s…that’s horrible.”

“With your old coworker, actually. Eleanor. I guess it had been going on for a while. Apparently Dot always had her suspicions. There’s been a whole string of women from the foundation who Henry’s slept with.”

“That’s awful.”

Abby was silent on her end. I could hear honking and traffic in the background, a barking dog, a faraway siren. The sounds of the city.

“You there?” I said.

“Okay, Jules, this is going to sound really weird. But I feel like I have to tell you.”

“What is it?”

“Promise you’ll stay calm, okay? Deep breaths.”

“Abby? You’re freaking me out.”

“So all these women Henry slept with, they were always girls who worked at the foundation. And they were usually—ugh—they were usually Laurie’s assistants. I guess Laurie often hired friends of the family as a favor to the Fletchers. They were always the young, pretty ones. Henry’s type, I guess. He went through them fast. Eleanor was the exception.”

“Creepy.”

“Dot found this out a while ago. Back in November or December, around the gala. Dot confronted him, and she made Laurie clean house. They fired Eleanor around Christmas. And—God, Jules. She made Laurie fire you, too.”

“Abby? What—”

“Dot’s going to keep the foundation after the divorce. She’ll have plenty of money to keep it running. But she wanted to get rid of anyone she suspected might have slept with Henry. Which included you. So she made Laurie fire you. The story about having financial problems was a cover.”

I barked out a hybrid cough-laugh-sob. “Oh, my God.”

“I’m so sorry. I thought you should know.”

“Jesus.”

“Jules, for what it’s worth, this is only Dot’s paranoia. I told Jake that Julia Edwards is not like that. You just wouldn’t do that. Never, ever. You’re way too good a person. She’s a total bitch for thinking that about you.”

I felt a sick pain in my stomach. Maybe at one point I had been a good person, but not anymore. I couldn’t pretend to be offended or outraged at the insinuation. For so long I’d been able to cling to this purity, at least: my firing had been unjust. I was justified in my complaints—until now, suddenly, I wasn’t. I was a liar. I was a cheater. Maybe Laurie had seen that about me all along. This explained her cold attitude all those months. The things she must have thought about me. The roses on my birthday. Sucking up to Dot at the gala. Another pliable, too-eager-to-please young woman making a fool of herself.

The whole time, I’d thought I was too good for that place. But at last I knew the truth, and while the suspicion was wrong, the underlying moral lapse wasn’t. Abby was going on, trying to convince me it was going to be fine, fuck them, they’re terrible for thinking that about me. The knife twisted. That was the worst part, the unearned sympathy. Abby, my best friend, the person who saw only the good in me, who believed I was innocent. I hung up before she could realize how hard I was crying.

*  *  *

The 2nd Avenue bar that rainy Monday night was nearly empty. The bartender saw my wet hair and distraught expression and gave me one on the house. I felt like I was in the last stage of a long race, pushing for the finish line, trying to outrun whatever was chasing me, but I realized—after my second or third vodka soda, I can’t remember—that it was pointless. It was done. It was already over.

Evan was sitting on the futon when I opened the door, his head cradled in his hands, a weary cliché. My phone was sitting on the coffee table. He looked up.

“Julia. How could you do this to me?”

I was silent. I had no defense, no excuse. Only pathetic tears, invisible in the slick of rainwater that streamed down my face.

“How long?”

“Two months. Evan, I—”

He shook his head. It was almost like pity. He stood up, put on his coat, and picked up a duffel bag that was sitting by the door.

“I’m going to a hotel for the rest of the week. You can stay here, but you need to be out by Friday. I’m going to call the landlord and get you taken off the lease.”

I should have apologized. I should have at least tried to explain myself, should have thrown myself at his feet, but the expression on his face said he didn’t want to hear it. He looked like a person who knew better than to waste any more emotion on something that had been dead for so long.

He paused, one foot propping the door open. A memory flashed—the day we moved in together, Evan turning to me before going down for the boxes that hot June morning. “Julia,” he said finally. “It’s over. I don’t want to see you again.”

*  *  *

“Mom? Dad?” My voice echoed in the front hall, the screen door slamming behind me. Abby’s words were running through my head, loud and clamoring.

“We’re in here,” my mom called from the living room. She and my father were sitting on the couch, the Sunday paper spread out between them. My father looked at me over the top of his glasses. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Did you know the Fletchers were getting divorced? Did you know why?”

My mother glanced at my father, panic skipping across her face. “Sweetie—”

My father interrupted. “Why don’t you sit down, Julia.”

“Do you want to know why I really got fired? Or did you know the whole time and you just didn’t feel like telling me?”

He took off his glasses, placed them carefully in his pocket. “Julia. You know I’m bound by attorney-client privilege. You know what that means.”

“I’m your daughter. Doesn’t that mean something?”

“Of course it does,” my mother said. “Honey, it just didn’t seem like it was going to make it any better. You were already going through such a hard time. We didn’t think—”

“What? You didn’t think I deserved the truth?”

“Watch your tone,” my father said, his voice snapping into firmness.

“James, that isn’t necessary.”

“Nina, don’t coddle her. And Julia, for God’s sake, this isn’t all about you.” This was the voice I’d overheard through the years, during so many fights and arguments. His end-of-the-rope voice. I’d never before been on the receiving end. I’d never dared. But a new anger was bubbling up in me. My parents, all that time, listening to me complain about my firing, letting me humiliate myself with every retelling of the story, choosing to keep quiet about the truth. The knife twisted again.

“So you were fine with it,” I said. “You were fine with them thinking I was some stupid slut. I guess that’s more important to you, right? I mean, God forbid you defend me. You would never want to stir anything up with the beloved Fletchers.”

“Enough.” He stood up and pointed at the stairs. “That’s enough. Go to your room.”

My mother looked like she was on the verge of tears. She started to open her mouth. My father barked, “Nina, don’t. She needs to get control of herself.”

I scoffed. I knew he would hate it, this show of insubordination. “I’m not a kid anymore. You don’t get to talk to me like that.”

“You are. You’re a child, you’re our child, and you’ll listen to me.”

“I’m a person,” I shouted. “I’m a fucking person, Dad.”

  

My mother came upstairs, knocking light as a butterfly on my door. She sat on the edge of my bed. I was curled up, facing the wall. I had stopped crying an hour earlier, but my pillow was still damp with tears.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I mumbled.

She reached over and laid her palm on my forehead, like she was checking for a fever. “Honey. I’m sorry about your father. He shouldn’t have lost his temper like that.”

Why were we always apologizing for the wrong things? My father and his temper, Dot and her paranoia, my betrayal of Spire’s secrets. They were all proxies for the real problem. We talked in circles to avoid what we didn’t want to admit. My father, the chauvinist. My selfishness, my complete lack of empathy. But I feared my problems were anchored by even deeper roots than that. I didn’t know what it was to love. I had never known. All I had to do was look at my parents. My heart had grown a hard shell a long time ago, long before I had ever thought of boyfriends or lovers or careers or a life of my own. Maybe, under other circumstances, that shell would have made me impervious to heartbreak. But it was only a brittle barrier, and with enough pressure it had shattered and left me exposed.

*  *  *

A month later. Spring unfurls into summer with a string of sunny days. I scan job listings and compose halfhearted cover letters, but each attempt sinks like a stone. I hear about other classmates getting laid off, too many to count, classmates who have also moved back home or applied to the shelter of grad school. I ought to find solace in this company, in the collective misery of the country, but it does nothing to mitigate the specific pain—it’s like taking painkillers that flood the body when you have a big, throbbing splinter in your thumb.

There is a certain comfort to bottoming out. To knowing what you’re capable of enduring. These past months at home, I kept waiting for things to improve, for the upward swing to arrive. There was one more thing left, though. The last piece of the puzzle. A memory, one I had tried so hard to forget, that finally helped me understand why things had gone so wrong last year.

*  *  *

The night of the day when I found out the truth from Abby, after my mother left me alone in my room, I found I couldn’t stop thinking about it. What, really, was wrong with me? Why had I done the terrible things I’d done? The nasty voice that had started dogging me the summer after graduation, the doubts and insecurities: it seemed clear where that came from. I had always been the girl who did everything right, who had followed the rules and checked every box. The problem emerged from my failure to continue that trajectory. I had grown too unsure about everything. I hesitated, I wavered. I needed someone to tell me what to do next.

There was the clink of cutlery downstairs. My parents were going to eat dinner like it was any normal night, pretend that fight hadn’t just happened, like we’d been pretending all along. Then I heard a soft tap on the door. “Julia?” my mother said. “I made you a sandwich. I’m going to leave it here, okay?” Silence, but I could tell she hadn’t walked away. “Sweetheart. We were only trying to protect you because we love you so much.”

I took a long shower. I meant to leave the sandwich untouched in protest, but I was hungry, and my mother’s words had softened me. And while I ate, I started thinking. What if I was wrong? What if I hadn’t needed someone to tell me what to do next? Last year, after graduation, I’d had no idea what I was supposed to do with my life, and I wanted an answer. But what if the point was the question, not the answer?

It’s so tempting. Being told: this is who you are. This is how your life will go. This is what will make you happy. You will go to the right school, find the right job, marry the right man. You’ll do those things, and even if they feel wrong, you’ll keep doing them. Even if it breaks your heart, this is the way it’s done.

That night sophomore year. The memory I had been trying not to think about for so long. After Adam invited me into his room, upstairs at his party, he stepped close and backed me up against the wall. He leaned in and kissed me. For the first time all night—all year—I stopped thinking. I stopped thinking about everything confusing and difficult and uncertain. Doubts about my relationship, about friendships, about what I should major in. The sickening look of disappointment on Evan’s face, downstairs. The feeling of having too much space and not ever knowing what I was supposed to do with it. It vanished. Adam was such a good kisser. My mind was finally at peace, focused on only one thing: the person in front of me.

Then a bang sounded from the party below, a speaker blowing out, the music stopping abruptly. We pulled apart, and Adam looked at the door. A loud chorus of booing filled the void. And then, a second later, the music started again. Adam, satisfied that the problem had been fixed, turned back to me. There was a gleam in his eyes, a hunger for something he knew he was about to consume.

But I was frightened of myself, of what I was doing. I’d been this person before—a cheater, a liar—but I didn’t want to be that person again. I wanted to be better. Adam slipped his hands to my waist. The clash between temptation and resistance made me nauseous. I wanted this; I didn’t want this; I’d been daydreaming about this for months. He kissed me harder and started sliding his hands under the hem of my dress.

“No,” I said, turning so his lips grazed my cheek. “No, Adam, I can’t do this.”

“Yes, you can,” he muttered, kissing me on the collarbone.

“No,” I said, more forcefully this time. “No, I can’t. Please stop.”

I pushed him away. He looked confused. “You’re joking, right?”

“No, Adam. I have a boyfriend. You know that.”

“You’re serious?”

I started for the door, but he grabbed my hand. “Let me go,” I said.

“What the hell, Julia? This is exactly what you wanted.”

“No, it’s not. Adam, stop.” I tried to wrest my hand free.

He laughed. “You are such a fucking tease.”

“I’m not—I’m sorry if I led you on. I thought we were just friends.”

“You’re sorry? Julia, what the fuck do you want? You really want to go back to Evan? Like he’s going to make you happy?” He laughed again. “He’s never going to make you happy. Anyone can see that.”

I shook my head. “You’re wrong.”

“I’m not wrong, Jules. I mean, you guys are going to break up sooner or later. It’s so obvious. So what’s the problem here?”

“You don’t know him. You don’t know anything about it.”

“I know exactly who Evan is. And I know who you are. You’re bored. You want more, don’t you? You want something better. I know you do.”

He was waiting for me to say something. When I didn’t, he stepped closer, his hands against the wall on either side of me. He leaned in so his mouth was next to my ear.

“Let me tell you how this is going to go,” he said in a low voice. I closed my eyes. “You’re going to forget about Evan. Forget about everything else. It’s just you and me, right now. Isn’t that what you wanted?” I could feel the damp heat of his breath against my neck. “I know you, Julia. The real you. I know what you want. You’re going to stay here with me.” I was thinking: Is he right? Does he know the real me? Is that so impossible to imagine? “You’re going to take that dress off. And then you’re going to—”

“I’m leaving,” I said, ducking under his arm. He didn’t know me. I’d been so stupid, letting my boredom disguise such an obviously bad idea as a good one. I wanted to be better than I had been before. I was better. Adam didn’t know the real me. He was wrong.

But he grabbed my hand and yanked me back. He pinned me against the wall with his weight and used one hand to pull up my dress, the other to unbutton his jeans.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I squirmed away from his hands.

“Come on, babe,” he said, trying to kiss me. He pressed against me, harder.

“Let me go. Adam, stop!”

Finally I got my hands onto his shoulders and used the leverage of the wall behind me to shove him away. He stumbled backwards, tripping.

“Fucking asshole,” I said, gasping for air.

He stared at me, his cheeks flaming red, then cooling. Then, after what felt like an eternity, he shrugged. “You know what, babe? I feel bad for you. I was just trying to help you out.”

I straightened my dress and wiped his spit away from my mouth. “Your loss,” he called as I slammed the door shut.

He graduated two months later. It took more than two years before he finally acknowledged what had happened that night. And by then—as awful as that night had been—the scar tissue had hardened so much that I couldn’t even feel the original wound underneath. I saw Adam again, and I didn’t remember what had come before. I didn’t want to remember. From the moment Adam came back into my life, I grew restless and unhappy and yearned for something new. I thought he was the answer. I never stopped to think that Adam was the source of my unhappiness. I thought my life was the illness and Adam was the cure. But the more time we spent together, the deeper my dissatisfaction grew. His presence was the only thing that could distract me from it. And so I kept returning to the well, drinking deeper and deeper.

Maybe that’s why, even though I’ve spent so much time thinking about last year, I don’t think about Adam that much. In the end, what we had went no deeper than the quick hit of a drug. All those dinners, those bottles of wine, those nights in his bed—they add up to nothing. The lie I told myself collapsed in one shattering moment, and now I can only start from scratch.

*  *  *

In the past month, I’ve carved out a new, careful routine for myself. I wake up early. I’ve started running again in the mornings, before the heat sets in. I take Pepper on long walks through the woods, throwing sticks for him until my arm is sore. I come home and eat lunch, leftovers or sandwiches, cleaning up after myself like a guest. My father is always at work, and my mother is always at her meetings and committees. Most days it’s just me and Jasmine, the housekeeper. We move on our separate tracks, nodding when we pass each other.

I have a stack of books from the local library. I’m filling the holes in my education, all those English classes I never took because I thought I hated the subject. Austen, Dickens, Brontë. Ovid and Homer, Woolf and Joyce. I have a vague plan to work my way up to the present. Some of the books make me laugh, some make me cry, some bore me to death, some I suspect I am utterly missing the point of. It doesn’t really matter. It’s the act of concentration that I need to relearn. I am trying to be present. Some afternoons I go to the Boston MFA, where I spend hours sitting in the galleries, losing myself in the artwork, grasping at the feeling I had in Paris.

In the mornings, I scan the news for a mention of Spire. The coverage has lessened as the months have gone by. In the beginning, the story was everywhere: the investigations, the plummeting of WestCorp’s shares, the promises of full cooperation with the authorities. Michael Casey ducking and covering his head whenever the cameras chased him. In those early weeks, every ringing phone or approaching car put me on edge. I was certain it had caught up to me. An officer at the door, ready to serve me with a subpoena, ready to haul me off and take my statement.

But that’s not what anyone cared about. The leak paled in comparison to the laws that had been broken, and Spire and the feds had bigger fish to fry. What mattered was the crime, not the telling. And I bet no one suspected Evan of being connected to it. Evan was chosen precisely because he would never run his mouth. I studied every picture in the paper and every clip on TV for a glimpse of his face, for evidence of what had happened to him. But there was nothing. The cameras were focused solely on Michael Casey, the one whose head the public demanded. Once or twice I saw Adam on TV, commenting on the latest update in the Spire story, grinning broadly under the hot studio lights. He’s finally as famous as I always thought he would be.

*  *  *

My mother, meanwhile, has been watching from a wary distance.

Most days she’s out the door before I’ve even left for my run, on her way to one of her appointments or Pilates classes, but the other morning she lingered at the kitchen table. I looked up from the paper and found she had a rare gaze of contentment.

“Julia.” She reached for my hand. “Sweetie, I’m proud of you. I’m so glad you’re feeling better. I can’t tell you how happy it makes me.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

She stood up. Sentiment over. While she fussed for her purse and car keys, she kept talking.

“You know who I ran into at the coffee shop yesterday? Rob’s mother. She didn’t know you were back.”

“Oh. That’s nice.” I hadn’t told Rob, or anyone, that I was back. I couldn’t find a way to mention it without inciting cloying pity.

“Rob’s coming out from Cambridge for dinner on Friday night. His mother’s invited you over, too. I think it would be really nice if you went. She seemed a little hurt that you hadn’t been by to see them. She’s always loved you.”

“I don’t know. I’m not—”

“She’s not going to take no for an answer. I’m not going to take no for an answer. Call her and tell her you’ll see her on Friday. It will be good for everyone. Okay?” She kissed the top of my head, rearranging a few rogue strands of hair before she left.

  

Friday evening, I knocked on Rob’s parents’ door. In the past, I would have let myself in.

Rob opened the door. He grinned and kissed me on the cheek. “Come in,” he said, gesturing me into the front hall. “They can’t wait to see you.”

Rob’s parents weren’t so different from my parents—this was true for all my friends except Evan—and the flow and contour of the conversation made me feel at home. It was instantly comfortable in a way I hadn’t quite expected: the same worn wood of their kitchen table, the familiar view of their backyard through the window. Rob’s father was a lawyer, and his mother had a successful career as a cookbook ghostwriter. She was an excellent cook. The wine, the chicken Marbella, the fragrant basket of bread and the yellow butter—the flavors were unchanged. His mother had a deep, lusty laugh I had always loved. His father still liked a Cognac after dinner. For a moment, it felt like the last four or five years had been a mere skip of the record.

After we finished dessert, a homemade pear tart, Rob and I stood to help his parents clear the table. His mother shook her head. “No—you two go on. I’m sure you want to catch up.” I wondered if she was in cahoots with my mother.

Rob held the front door open. “Let’s go for a walk. It’s a nice night.”

He filled me in on everything that had happened since Thanksgiving, when I’d seen him last. He had been accepted at Harvard Medical School. He’d also been accepted at Johns Hopkins, Stanford, and Columbia, but he’d decided on Harvard. He wanted to be a neurosurgeon eventually.

“So you’re staying here? I mean, in Cambridge?”

“Yup. Hey, you remember Mindy? From biology senior year?”

“Yeah, why?”

“She’s going to be in my class at Harvard.”

“The girl who threw up when we dissected the pig? Mindy wants to be a doctor?”

He laughed. “I wonder how she’s going to handle anatomy.”

We walked in silence for a stretch. I was tempted to take his hand; it only felt natural to do what we’d done so many times before. I stole a glance at him when we got to the park near his house. His face was illuminated by the far-off floodlights on the tennis court. I was trying to decide if he was different. He looked almost the same as he had in high school. Maybe a fraction taller, more stubble in his beard. But he was still, mostly, the person I’d fallen for when I was sixteen years old. What I was wondering was whether I was mostly the same person, too.

“What about you?” he said after we stopped and sat on a bench. “Are you going to stay?”

“Here? I don’t know.”

“How is it, living at home?”

“You know what my mom’s like.”

He held up his hands. “I plead the Fifth.”

“It’s fine, actually. It’s not so bad. They pretty much leave me alone. I guess I need to figure out what I actually want to do next. You know. Where I want to go.”

“Why not here? I know one reason for you to stay.”

The trees made a rushing sound when the night breeze blew through them, a sound like rain falling. The park was empty except for the two of us. I pulled my sweater tighter around me. I slid my feet free of my sandals and felt the cold, spongy grass between my toes. I used to play tennis in this park. The past, my past, was everywhere in this town. When I turned back to Rob, he was looking at me. He’d stated it as a fact, and he was right. He was one reason for me to stay.

I shrugged. “I’m not in any hurry. Just taking it one day at a time.”

“Do you want to come back to Cambridge tonight?”

“Not till the third date, buddy,” I said with a laugh.

“No, not like that. My roommates are having people over. A party.”

“It’s kind of late.”

“It’s, like, ten o’clock, grandma.”

“Well, I told my parents I’d walk the dog before bed.”

He offered a hand to help me up. “So living at home does have its downside.”

“Free food, though. Unlimited laundry.”

When we got back, his house was dark. I had parked at the bottom of the driveway, borrowing the Volvo for the night, and Rob’s old green Jeep was parked in front of it. It was the same junky car he’d driven in high school. On winter weekends in boarding school, we’d sometimes drive out to the beach on the North Shore. I’d dared him to go swimming once, on a frozen and windy January day, and before I could tell him I was kidding he had stripped to his boxers and run into the steel-gray Atlantic. Rob gave me a thumbs-up, his chest chapping red in the wind, then ducked beneath a crashing wave. We were alone, the only people on the beach. A moment passed. Another moment. Rob didn’t emerge back up. Five seconds, at least. Ten seconds. That was way too long. Just as I started sprinting for the water, he popped back up, grinning like a jack-in-the-box. “You’re insane!” I shouted over the roar of the wind. He’d done it just to get a rise out of me. To be able to say, later, that I’d been so worried about him I’d almost gone in myself. He was covered in goose bumps, lips turning blue, but he laughed the whole way back. Rob was like that.

I didn’t know what we were doing. Rob took my hands and pulled me toward him. I kept my gaze fixed to his shoulder.

“How about next week?” he was saying.

“What about it?”

“We should hang out again. Lunch?”

“Okay.” Thinking. Lunch was innocuous enough.

“Tuesday work for you?”

“Well, I’ll have to check my calendar. I’m a busy woman.”

“Good. Tuesday it is.” He tugged me in and kissed me on the cheek before letting go. As I drove away, he waved good-bye from the bottom of the driveway, and I watched him shrinking into the night in the rearview mirror.

  

Elizabeth had been calling in her spare moments to tell me about New York, doing her best to distract me. She was always rushing, always late to something.

“What about this weekend?” she said. It was Monday, the day before I was going to meet Rob for lunch. “My roommate’s going to be gone. I already cleared it with her. You can stay in her room.”

“I don’t know, Lizzie.”

“You know I live in Chinatown, right? It’s really far from the Upper East Side. You won’t run into him. You’re going to have to set foot in New York at some point.”

“Yeah, it’s just that—”

“Donald is throwing a party this weekend. In his loft. It’s going to be amazing. Jules, come on. You need to get out of that house. Shake it up a little.”

Rob was waiting for me when I arrived the next day. The Thai restaurant he’d picked was cool and dark inside, a bamboo fan spinning lazily on the ceiling. The restaurant was empty at the lunch hour, most people coming for takeout.

“It’s not fancy,” Rob said, drinking his beer. “But I like it.”

“So how much longer are you working at the lab?”

“The end of July, I think. It’s sort of arbitrary. It’s not like I’m really leaving. I’m staying in the same apartment next year.”

“You didn’t want to take time off before school?”

“I did. I took this year.” He reached across the table to try my noodles. “Hey, we’re going out to the Cape this weekend. One of my buddies rented a place for the summer. You should come.”

“You and your roommates? A bunch of dudes?”

“The girls are coming, too. It’s going to be awesome. It’s right on the beach.”

I took a small sip of beer. Elizabeth, urging me to New York. Rob, inviting me to the Cape. I knew this point would come eventually, my hibernation forced to an end. The weekend on the Cape would be fun. I could picture it: the burgers sizzling on the grill, the Frisbee floating back and forth. But I also had the feeling that if I were to do it—to go with Rob for the weekend, to be with him again—the previous four years really would vanish without a trace. Every way in which I thought I’d changed would be wiped out by the easy backslide into his arms. It was tempting, to so cleanly erase the messiness of the past. Adam, Evan, all the mistakes I’d made. The man was going to be a brain surgeon. Our life together could be a good one.

But I shrugged. “I might go stay with Elizabeth in New York this weekend.”

“I need to know by tonight, so I can save you a place in the car.”

“I’m not sure.”

He stared at me, quizzical. “I’m not going to wait around forever, Jules.”

We emerged from the cool darkness of the restaurant onto the too-bright sidewalk. I was squinting, disoriented, my vision spotty from the sunshine, and when Rob said good-bye he kissed me square on the mouth. His lips were still spicy from the noodles. “Let me know by tonight, okay?”