At the time, I resented the fact that Amanda’s upkeep stopped me from drinking myself sick and calling every former classmate and coworker I’d ever wanted to sleep with, but in retrospect that was for the best. I had some weekend adventures (piano bar to hotel bar to hotel room) and some long nights with the HBO roster. But as terrible as I felt—and, according to my friends, I was nearly catatonic for significant stretches during this period—I was pretty sure it wouldn’t be how things ended with Lisa. It was so far from the way she’d handled her life in all of the preceding years that I couldn’t imagine it was permanent. (She also, according to both mother and daughter, hadn’t introduced her new friend to Amanda, which must have been logistically difficult.) Another obvious possibility—that she was a fundamentally different person from the one I’d always thought her to be—was so painful that I tried not to let myself entertain it too often.

In any case, after months of minimal communication (necessary kid stuff only), I brought Amanda home from day camp and found Lisa sitting on the couch, wearing the flower-specked sundress I’d bought her for her birthday the year before. She cried, I cried; she begged forgiveness, I held out. Tim was an egomaniac, she said. He’d expected her to keep house for him while he worked on his book and schmoozed for tenure—Shirley Jackson all over again. She missed me (well, compared to that guy, sure), missed Amanda (obviously), hated Amherst (tell it to Emily Dickinson).

That first night she stayed home while I went out for a drink with Mike. Sure, he agreed, it was shitty, but if I still loved her, I had to forgive her and try to fix things. Because wasn’t this what I’d said I wanted? And, more importantly, wasn’t it the best thing for Amanda? Some version of this thought emerged as the consensus among my friends, family, fellow content aggregators. Mike’s wife Victoria was a notable exception. She cited “trust.” But see, I said, I wouldn’t ever trust anyone again, so if you looked at it that way, she was only as untrustworthy as everyone else! Vic was not convinced.