It looked like a window to another world, distant, impossible for me to reach. It was on the other side of a two- or three-minute window of time when I had looked away.

I went into my dressing room to rifle through my cocktail dresses with numb hands. I didn’t want my usual colors or cuts. I needed something closer to a costume. Bree Cabbat had fallen entirely apart, so I could not be her. I had to be some other woman, smiling and calm. I’d begun to be her earlier, but that character had shattered when the old woman hung up. I could not shatter again. Not if I wanted Robert back.

Just the thought of him and I felt tears threatening again. I didn’t understand how I had any left; I was desiccated, so wrung out that no water could possibly be left inside me. And yet I felt them welling.

I dashed them away, looking for the dress I wanted. It was shoved toward the back, the tags still on. I’d meant to return it. I favored springtime colors, floral prints in breezy fabrics, and this Erdem was jet-black, sleeveless, with pointed shoulder pads and a high collar. I’d bought it in a spasm of odd hormones, a day before I realized I was pregnant with Robert.

Now I found myself nodding stupidly and pulling it on. The stiff, shiny fabric felt like armor. It was a little tight, but not in a bad way. I had a pair of high-heeled black booties, dressy enough to read “cocktail party” and hide the aging pedicure I’d meant to fix this weekend.

“Your husband’s firm has a party tonight. At the Botanical Garden. Yes?”

“Yes. But I never RSVP’d.” I’d had secret plans to claim “cranky baby” and skip it in favor of microwave popcorn and streaming a movie with the girls, Robert sleeping in his pack-n-play nearby.

“Well, I need you there.”

“I can just show up.” I was Trey’s wife. They’d let me in. But her request felt nonsensical. She took my baby to make me go to a party?

I sat down at the vanity, trying not to think of Robert. If I let myself feel his absence, I’d start screaming again. If I started, I didn’t see how I could ever stop.

I turned on the mirror lights, flinching at my pinched, pale face. But the ice had helped. I looked like a woman who’d once been pretty. Maybe even myself, if I were ten hard years older.

The whites of my sunken eyes were crimson from crying. I tilted my head back to put in some Visine. I couldn’t show up at the party looking like this. I’d been ordered not to draw attention or questions.

“Get there soon as you can. Smile and chat. Be like regular, you understand?”