Throughout the whole flight, Emily kept thinking about Ezra. She kept thinking about the feeling that had inspired the beginning of a song, the one she was writing, the one that was her own. She gave herself over to it, and let it grow and change. As the plane traveled farther from New York, the melody and lyrics kept evolving. She wished she had a keyboard so she could really hear it and start arranging it as she wrote. But even without a keyboard, by the end of the flight she had something.

He has love in his heart

For everyone but me

He floats on a river of compassion

While I swim in the sea.

When I reach for him

He just doesn’t see

Because there’s love in his heart

For everyone but me

And you say he’s kind

And you say he’s good

And I know it’s true

For you, for you

It wasn’t a whole song. It wasn’t even a good one. But it had a verse and a chorus. Or maybe a chorus and a bridge. She needed to work on it. But channeling her emotions into a song . . . it made everything feel like somehow it would be okay. She was transforming her pain into something else. And in doing so, she was transforming herself.

Plus, focusing on that meant she could ignore the feeling that her life was coming undone. Things were falling apart. The center was shifting off course. And she wasn’t doing anything to pull it back. At least not yet.

She might even be pushing it further afield.

51

When Emily crossed the jet bridge into the airport in Cancun, she could feel the damp warmth of the beach penetrating the building—and her, too. Her bones felt warmer. But her heart cracked a little when she realized the last time she stepped off a plane into this airport it was with Ezra by her side, a few days before their wedding. Things had felt so different then. So solid, so secure, like nothing could ever tear them apart, the threads of their relationship woven from iron. But iron rusts and crumbles. Was that what was happening now?

As she got through customs, she saw someone in a baseball cap and sunglasses holding a piece of hotel stationery with her name scrawled on it. Had Rob sent her a driver? She’d told him not to but actually wouldn’t mind not having to figure out where and how to get a taxi. She walked toward the man and realized, as she got closer, that Rob hadn’t sent anyone. It was him under the MEX baseball cap and aviators. He broke out in a grin when he spotted her moving in his direction.

“Bienvenidos a Cancún,” he said, when she was within earshot.