The silk of my black dress felt like a cool, rich second skin. I’d picked this dress for the irony. I’d worn it on our honeymoon, and Grant could barely keep his hands off me when he saw me in it. Three times—we had made love three times that night all because of this dress.

What with the extra poundage I’d gained after birthin’ four young ’uns, as Mac used to quip, it was a miracle the dress still fit fifteen years later. Maybe it was a miracle if the nuts and bolts of any marriage still fit together fifteen years later. Couples got restless, complacent, needy, didn’t they? To give it all up now, after all we’d been through, seemed a waste—our early years of financial struggle, surviving on ramen noodles, building a medical practice from the ground up and all the pain that went with it, raising four kids, Willow’s lacrosse games, Ryan’s baseball games, pool parties, vacations with six people squeezed into two bedrooms, sporadic date nights, sexless months, births, deaths, love, loss . . . we’d gone through it all together. I couldn’t imagine not having Grant to go through it with.

Life could be taken away at any moment, I had learned today. After empty consolations while Mac grieved Owen’s death, I had nothing left to offer other than my company. She turned it down, wanting to be alone. I knew she needed space to mourn, just as I needed confrontation to find truth.

I arrived at Boot Scooters fifteen minutes before our scheduled rendezvous. I had intentionally picked an out-of-the-way place—no chance of running into anyone we knew and blowing my cover. The bar was a real dive, like one of those seedy joints you see in the movies but doubt really exists. There were tacky neon sculptures of cowboy hats, motorcycles, and naked women on the dark paneled walls. Country music—not rockin’ contemporary, but old-school “tear in your beer” stuff—blared from a battered old Wurlitzer jukebox. I stood out like a nun in a whorehouse—another funny Mac-ism. But I looked damned sexy in that dress, if I did say so myself. Making my way to the bar, every male head turned.

“I’m meeting somebody,” I said to the barkeeper, “and I want to surprise him.”

“Got a booth in the back yonder,” he said, gesturing languidly.

I looked. It was in a dark, private corner, away from the noisy jukebox and the main crowd, which was thin at this early hour.

“My date will be coming in any minute now. He’ll ask for me.”

While pouring two beers from the tap, it was a full five seconds before he answered. “What name?”

I told him.

The bartender studied me, his eyes flashing with sudden interest. “Seems like I’ve heard that name before.”

I chuckled softly. “Yeah, maybe you have. Here’s a fiver for your trouble.”