That first, sweltering summer, I felt like I was the only person in Manhattan. I was working nonstop and had neither the money nor the cachet for a summer place in the Hamptons or any other chic city-adjacent locale. By the time I left work around eight each night, I was exhausted and hot and the last thing I felt like doing was eating. Every now and then, I would walk the dozen or so blocks from the Bank of America Tower to Serendipity 3, decompressing from my day, to get my favorite banana split. Maybe it was childish, but, well, I was twenty-one: part of me was still a child.

That particular night, I was dreaming of that perfect dish with the delectable ice cream and light, fluffy whipped cream, but when I took my seat in the colorful restaurant right beside a flying unicorn and tried to order, the server said, “I’m so sorry. We’re out of bananas. We just served our last banana split.” As luck or fate would have it, he pointed to the person at the table beside me, a man in his midtwenties, with blond hair swept casually over his forehead, his blue eyes sparkling. My heart skipped a beat when he smiled at me. “I’ll share,” he said, gesturing to the seat across from him.

The good Southern girl in me should have protested, but even I—young and inexperienced in the ways of the world—knew when a man was flirting with me. I took the seat and his extra spoon and Bill said, “You can’t call ice cream dinner if it doesn’t have produce.”

“That’s what I always say!” I smiled and whispered, “But the frozen hot chocolate is really my favorite.”

“Then we should get that for dessert,” he said.

I had fallen in love with that sweet, charming man on the spot—or, well, maybe while we were sipping one frozen hot chocolate out of two straws. I had found him to be kind but passionate, thoughtful yet driven. Sure, he had made some mistakes. But hadn’t we all?

And now people were saying my husband had defrauded dozens of people out of millions of dollars. Why wouldn’t he have come to me if he was in trouble? After days of first-class, hard-core avoidance, I felt desperate to know the answer. I was swamped with guilt over not attending his arraignment. But now I was ready. I would march myself, like many, many scorned women before me, down to the county jail where my husband was being held without bond because he was a “flight risk.” And, well, he might have had a teeny, tiny, nothing, stupid prior conviction for check fraud. (The mistake…) It was only a state misdemeanor, and it was years ago. But it was enough to justify holding him without bond, enough to make me doubt him.… And I wasn’t the only one.