“I don’t know. Just don’t go today. This is just an excuse, isn’t it? Just an excuse to see her again.”

“Don’t get on my back about this now.”

“On your back? You’re headed out to some deserted island with your ex-girlfriend and I’m on your back?”

“I’m not getting in a fight with you today. I’m not. And I’m late.”

“If you go there and skip this party . . .”

“What?”

He knew what came next: something about everything she’d done for him, how he must go to this party with her. But the litany didn’t come; she just turned away. Instead of going after her, Nick turned and walked toward the door to the garage.

He’d almost made it out the door when he heard her. “I do everything for you and the kids. Everything. And you can’t skip this—this one thing.”

He knew if he turned to this tune, he’d be singing it for the next few hours when he wanted to be thinking of something else entirely, someone else entirely.

“Answer me. You can’t just walk away,” she said.

“Yes, I can,” he said without turning. Then he opened the door to the garage, hesitated as the other part of him—the part that lived in this house with this family—prodded him to turn. He looked over his shoulder.

“It’s a project, not a reflection of all you do for me. I’ll be home tonight.”

Her face looked swollen, out of proportion from holding back a temper tantrum or tears. “Isn’t it funny?”

“No, I really am not seeing humor here.”

“Funny how things come back around, making us pay again just when we thought they were completely paid for.” Her voice sounded robotic, and a shiver crawled through his gut.

“What am I paying for?”

“Oh, not you, Nick. Not you.”

This time she turned away, and her motions seemed as automatic as her voice. The picture of his life now slanted even more than a few moments ago. His curiosity about who was paying for what could not match the pull of finding out Amy’s reaction to what he had to tell her.

Amy plopped down on the marble bench that sank into the soft soil, slanted down on the left. She dropped her black leather teachers’ planner and notebook beside her. She’d brought class work with her to distract her from the true purpose in sitting on a marble bench in a deserted courtyard behind the college dorm where she would stay tonight. She’d come here a thousand other times to grade papers, enjoy the beauty of the Porter Hall courtyard and gardens, brainstorm about the best way to teach her students about Greek-revival architecture, or the influence of the English on Georgian-style homes—something, anything that would remove the slack-mouthed stares that accompanied her students’ boredom.