He looked up, and for the first time ever I saw my husband cry. “I’m begging you to give us just one more chance. You can’t make this kind of decision after your mother’s death and our daughter going off to college. You can’t. Just promise me you’ll give us one more chance. I know I’m not perfect, but we’ll go talk to someone—you can choose. We’ll go on vacation somewhere alone. Please don’t walk out.”

The fairy tale returned. My prince was here on his white horse. Or so it seemed. “I don’t know what to do next,” I said.

He looked up. “Let’s start simple, okay? Dinner. Let’s go out to dinner and talk. Just us. Okay?”

“Yes, that would be nice.”

He smiled his cutest grin, but it had the same effect as blindfolding me in a locked labyrinth—panic.

“Oh, good. Really great.” He took me in his arms and I allowed him to do this, to hold me.

Rusty held my hand in the car as if we were on a date, as if he were courting me. He had a huge smile on his face, and when I asked where we were headed he said, “It’s a surprise.”

We drove toward midtown, and before we turned left on Piedmont, I knew where we were going. “The botanical gardens,” I said.

The XM radio played Melody Gardot and my heart squeezed with pain. He turned the music up. “Great Norah Jones song.” And then he turned to me at the stoplight. “Yes. There’s a jazz concert tonight. I wanted to surprise you. I have a picnic from Henri’s packed in the trunk. I thought this would make for a nice evening.”

“This is an amazing idea,” I said, wondering how he didn’t hear the jagged edges of fear in my every spoken word. How could he not feel the quiver of my skin as I withdrew from his touch? Not see the tightening of my throat? Had I become that good at faking satisfaction, so expert at feigning contentment, that he couldn’t read a single emotion?

While he spread the picnic onto a blanket, I became an observer, floating above myself and watching the crowd filter into the gardens. How could I ever be in a place like this and not think of Mother? The crowning achievement of her life was being president of the Atlanta Botanical Society. If they’d given her a crown and banner, she’d have worn it every day. “God, Mother worshipped this place,” I said.

Rusty stuck a corkscrew into a wine bottle and laughed. “More than she loved most people, I think.”

“Me too.”