SEPTEMBER IN NEW York was still prone to unpleasant hotness, but by October, which had always been Liz’s favorite month, the city was at its best—the leaves in Central Park were changing color, the stylish women who worked at Mascara and its sister magazines were wearing belted coats, and her favorite deli was selling pumpkin soup. It had occurred to Liz that her extended stay in Cincinnati might distance her from her New York friends, or even from her own habits there, but in fact, she appreciated the city anew, and the affection appeared reciprocal: She went out often for drinks, dinner, or brunch, in many cases with people she hadn’t socialized with for over a year, and there was much to gossip about and discuss. Though she made a point of calling her parents every other evening, and texting her sisters as often if not more so, the absence of constant familial obligations made her feel as if additional hours had been inserted into each day, hours in which she could read novels, attend movies, go for long runs, or visit museum exhibits that she probably, the previous spring, would have intended to see without actually doing so, believing herself to be too busy.

A few weeks had passed before Liz realized that these auxiliary chunks of time were attributable not simply to no longer being at the beck and call of her family but also to the conclusion of her relationship with Jasper. It was in the second week of October, with neither delight nor vengeance, that Liz discarded the red sheer teddy and matching thong underwear, never worn, that he’d sent her in Cincinnati. She also recycled the piece of computer paper on which, over a decade and a half, she had written what she’d once deemed Jasper’s best sentences: I talk way more openly with you than I do with her. Sometimes I think you and I would be a good couple. I love you in my life. How meager these offerings had come to seem, how provisional their compliments. Yet surely she was as culpable as he was; recalling her casual speculation about when Jasper’s wife’s grandmother might die and thereby free Jasper and Susan to divorce, Liz wondered if a stronger sign of a relationship’s essential corruptness could exist than for its official realization to hinge on the demise of another human being.

In any case, when the autumn nights most filled Liz with yearning—when, as she was leaving work, the smell of candied cashews and fallen leaves wafted through the cool air—the person she thought about wasn’t Jasper.