“Of course I still love you,” I said finally, barely a whisper. “I’ve just been—I’m under a lot of stress right now, you know, with the wedding, with everything. Getting out at night, having activities,” I lied, “it distracts me, clears my head.”

He nodded, thought about what I had said. “Elise. Listen. You’re not still worried about Adrienne, are you?”

I huffed, puffed, rolled my eyes. Of course I wasn’t still worried about Adrienne. I was just tailing her twenty-four hours a day.

“Because there’s nothing to worry about there. She and I are just friends. Absolutely nothing more. You know that.”

Did I?

“Well, if you don’t, you should.”

Donald stepped toward me, put his arms around me, held me tight. Then he reached down and kissed me. I looked up, blinked backed tears I felt could give me away. I wanted suddenly to come clean, to admit my fears and suspicions, my unconscionably bad behavior. Like a fugitive spy, I wanted to come in from the cold.

But holding on to Donald, inhaling the smell of his freshly laundered T-shirt, I knew I couldn’t.

Not just yet.

Chapter 24

24

But when I finally came upon them, Donald and Adrienne, it was almost by accident: by that I mean, for once, I wasn’t snooping, but merely out, driving, with no ulterior motive. Dr. Frond, of course, would have had a moment of silence: to her, nothing—not the alignment of the planets; not the seeming randomness of two people (or, in this case, three) being in the same place at the same time—was an accident. I must have made it happen.

I was heading up Wisconsin Avenue, about to make a left and go down Albemarle to the Crate and Barrel on Massachusetts Avenue (the store had called; there was a “slight problem” with our online bridal registry: They’d lost it). What was remarkable that Friday morning was that my intended route to Crate and Barrel could have easily and with absolute legitimacy taken me past both the Sidwell Friends school and Adrienne’s street, where I could have knocked off two late-morning drive-bys. But for some inexplicable reason—Donald’s lingering sadness from the night before, and my inability to talk myself back into sanity and stay home and have dinner with him—that day I had decided to forgo those drive-bys until later in the afternoon. Seeing them together on the street, walking slowly toward Donald’s car, hit me like an express train.

Even though I was driving, I felt my knees buckle. Trying not to veer into oncoming traffic, I watched them, walking, talking, as if in the same silent underwater pantomime that I’d observed weeks before in front of Adrienne’s house. I pulled over at the first opportunity, then looked out the window again. They were now getting into Donald’s car; a few seconds later the car headed up Wisconsin.