Steel Magnolias had long been one of my favorite sagas of female empowerment. Partly because the movie was timeless. Partly because seeing it in a local theatre production was our first real date. Young and broke, Oliver had wooed me with Chinese takeout and two tickets to the show. That date sealed the deal for me as he timidly grasped my hand ten minutes in, and let me wipe my tears on his sleeve during the part where Shelby died.

“I don’t know. I’m kind of ready to just go home.” I knew he was trying, trying to move forward, trying to live, trying to be us again. But I simply couldn’t. I didn’t want to. Not until life was whole.

“Please, Felicity? My dad’s watching the kids, so we have the whole evening to ourselves. We need a night to forget everything and just have fun together.”

“I don’t want to have fun, Oliver.” It was the truth. I wanted to brood, wonder, solve, figure everything out.

He slammed his fork down. “Why do you do this?”

“Do what?”

“Ruin every single moment we have together. Can’t you at least try to have a nice dinner out?”

I knew he was tired of me. Tired of my silence. My anger. My pain. My guilt. Hell, I was tired of me too.

“I am trying. I don’t know what else you want from me.”

Oliver rested his hand on mine, bridging the gap between us. “I want you to acknowledge me. See me. Smile with me. Anything. We’re all going through this together, but there comes a point where we have to hold it together for the kids, for each other. Are you just going to stay miserable forever?”

“How can I feel any other way until we find Vera?”

“And what if we never find her? What if she’s gone forever?”

I gripped my fork and felt the muscles tense and tremble with an unfamiliar rage. “She’s not gone forever.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes I do. I feel it in my bones. And I have this awful feeling that Marin had something to do with her leaving. If only I could figure out what—”

“Stop!” Oliver’s yell yanked the couple’s attention from their phones, paused Kurt Cobain’s doppelgänger’s latest guitar set. All eyes pivoted to my raving husband. “Stop obsessing with Marin! Has it ever occurred to you that it’s because of you—us—that Vera left? Have you ever considered that maybe she found out what we did and wants nothing to do with her messed-up fake family anymore?”

I silenced him with a stony stare, resuming the argument at a near-whisper. “People are listening, Oliver. How would Vera have found out about something that long ago, anyway? It doesn’t make any sense. No one knows but us. Unless…do you think Cody would have told Marin?”