Whatever he was about to say was cut off; the sound of a key in the door made us both jolt. “I’m here!” Ari said, joining us in the kitchen, a small carton in her hand. She hugged me. “I had to walk ten blocks up,” she said, “to find organic cream.” She wiggled out of her jacket, surveyed the half-assembled charcuterie board. “You left the rind on the Gouda.” She pointed to the cheese, then to Atlas, before sailing off and disappearing behind a door.

He looked at me. “Told you.”

Dinner was fettuccine with homemade Alfredo, an odd choice for June, but rather good nonetheless. As soon as we sat at her square glass dining table, Ari brought up Melinda Darley. “Seems like the minute she got confirmed, she’s set her mind to make my migraines flare up,” Ari said, piqued. “She’s too fit to expect something like a heart attack. If only she didn’t eat so many salads. I bet she’s one of those women who goes to the gym at four in the morning.”

“You go to the gym at four in the morning,” Atlas said.

“I’m doing good in this town,” responded Ari. “You want to keep me around. Melinda Darley I need gone.”

“Do we really wish for the death,” Atlas said, using his knife to scoot salad onto the back of his fork, “of people who antagonize us?”

“She never said anything about death,” I said. Ari had lit tea lights and asked her home assistant to play classical music. We were bantering in a friendly way, the tension of our previous meeting a distant memory. Maybe, in someone else’s story, the girlfriend of the love interest would be a heinous monster. In mine, I was realizing, she was just a woman with both redeemable qualities and obvious flaws.

“Thank you, Daisy.” She swirled her wine in her glass. “Not death. Just unconsciousness. Or career-wrecking scandal.”

“I know a little something about those,” I said. “I’m about to wreck my own career shortly.” I looked to Atlas. As he did the work of explaining to Ari what I meant, I scrutinized her face for signs of disgust. Out of all the reactions I predicted people might feel once reading Atlas’s article, this would be the one I’d have the most trouble accepting.

Once Atlas was done, though, Ari’s only words were of consolation. She had her own story, it seemed, a familiar one—her father, money, a younger woman, divorce, scandal. There had been secret credit cards, a club named Whipped and Cream. This had happened in Atlanta, when she was in high school. She rarely discussed it, she said. Last time she talked to her father was New Year’s Eve 2008.

“That must’ve been truly awful,” I said. There must be many more stories like ours out there.