She looks hurriedly around. Then, telling Lina that we need a few minutes alone, she grabs my arm and leads me down a paved path, past headstones and under trees whose leaves whisper in the ocean breeze, toward a stone bench facing the sea. As we walk, I smell age and foliage and ocean, even a trace of honeysuckle wafting from nearby bushes. I also smell Chanel’s Gabrielle, which I gave to Chrissie last Christmas.

Her voice is breathless as we walk. “I know you have to be back at the house. This might have waited if my mother hadn’t seen me.”

“Waited how long?” I ask as we leave the grass and reach the bench. Her hand has left my arm, removing this last bit of connectedness.

I don’t sit. I can’t. I can barely even hear the sea, so if Chrissie thought that would calm me, this plan backfires as well. And here is another memory, poking at me like a bratty child. How many times have I told Chrissie about my love of the sea? How many times have I described growing up beside it, seeking solace in the fact that it is always, always there? These were doors that I naively opened, that she knowingly ignored.

“Tell me, Chrissie. Now.” The warning in my voice is for real. Our friendship depends on what she says. As it stands, I’m feeling lied to and betrayed. The one relationship that I have relied on most these past few years is in serious jeopardy. If there isn’t truth, there isn’t trust, and if there isn’t trust, what is there?

She puts the back of her hand to her nose. It is a gesture I know, one that means she is trying to decide what to do. Only this time, she isn’t grappling with her three-year-old’s all-out, on-the-floor temper tantrum.

Finally, her fingers go to her sunglasses, which she removes. Her eyes are frightened, which is good. I’m glad it’s not just me.

“When I walked into the gym that first day,” she begins, leaning against the stone bench, then straightening again, seeming unsure which to do, “I had no idea who you were. I swear it, Mal. It was pure coincidence that we ended up next to each other. Then we started talking and just kept at it.” She is begging now. “I’d never clicked with anyone like that before. And the conversation had nothing to do with hometowns or parents. It was about the gym and kids and baby fat, and when we went for coffee afterward, we talked about work. Do you remember?”

I nod but am only marginally relieved. “That was the first of, what, a thousand conversations, during any one of which you might have told me who you were? When did you make the connection?”