Erin changed things for the better, but then came Jakarta, and that one terrible night no one could repair. He’d been sitting in a bar, an Indonesian cover band was playing “Hotel California.” An American woman slid up beside him. She was beautiful, with wavy black hair and green eyes, drinking Arak Attacks, pineapple juice and coconut palm liquor. She offered him a sip from her straw: “They make you go blind.” She smiled. He ordered one. But how many more? The next morning he sat alone in his hotel room, his head pounding. Something terrible had happened. He couldn’t recall what it was. He reached up and felt a lump on his forehead. He remembered the bar, the woman. He remembered getting behind the wheel of her rental car, saying something about all of the more difficult places he’d driven around the world. There had been a problem with the car’s lights or with its windshield wipers. He remembered squinting against the darkness and the rain. She asked him something, and he turned to her, he remembered that. And then she screamed. The sound of her scream in his mind brought it all back. He turned his attention back to the road just in time to see a boy on a bicycle. He jerked the wheel. He felt the thud of the impact in his chest.

The events of that night changed everything. He had killed a boy, Adri had been his name, and there was nothing he could do to fix it. He drank less in public after that. More when he was alone. He told Erin about the accident, leaving out the American woman and the extent of his drunkenness. The omission cursed their relationship, of course.

He tried to be present for her, to overcome what he’d done and who he was because of it. He saw well how he did in her eyes. She had been eager to help him in the beginning, but grew increasingly frustrated. “It’s one thing not to hear from you when you’re gone,” she told him, “but you’re standing right here!” His protective instincts ran too deep, she said. “You protect yourself first and foremost. You know that, right?”

And so, after a few drinks to dull the impact he would forever feel in his chest, he would get up from the couch and do what happy couples do—go out for dinner, meet up with their friends, tour that new art exhibit.

•   •   •

She drove a red Audi. He lowered himself into the passenger seat and she closed his door for him. As he pulled the seat belt across his chest, he noticed a bill from the Congressional Country Club wedged beside the passenger seat and his head cleared. “How’s Grant?” he asked, buckling in.

She turned to back the car out of its space. “He’s good. He’s in Chicago.”